


Twinning

by Whit Merule (whit_merule)



Series: Re-cognition [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, BAMF Sam, Episode: s11e15 Beyond the Mat, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Pining, Vessel Dean, Vessels, everybody hates metatron, so canon sam then
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-05-29 09:18:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 23,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6368965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whit_merule/pseuds/Whit%20Merule
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel has been helping Lucifer search for Hands of God (and, you know, quietly working on him to persuade him not to destroy the world while he's at it); but of course, Castiel also knows that it is just possible that there's another archangel still kicking, though trapped somewhere in the sphere of Metatron's influence. And after realising that, he still has to persuade Lucifer to get in on the plan, persuade Gabriel to  get in on the plan, and persuade Dean to... well. There's a lot of persuasion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
>   
> 

 

_**Twinning** (verb, present participle): 1) joining two separate parts into one; 2) separating one thing into two._

* * *

 

_Now_

The landscape of Heaven was crumpled black glass.

It was silent and dead, except for a far-away noise between a whisper and a scream that came from nowhere and everywhere all at once. There was no real ground. If there had been it would have been smooth and shiny, but it would have cut the foot that trod on it. And here and there it was not shiny: it was charred and dusty. Black still, but a dull black: in the shape of an angel’s wings.

Heaven was not crowded.

Lucifer made no comment. Castiel was thankful.

They glided through the land, half-twinned, Castiel’s form tangled up in Lucifer’s but not consumed by it, not as they were on earth. More himself, up here; more real.

Here and there, the path to somebody’s personal heaven was tucked into the folds of the landscape; but many more were lying singed and broken, the heaven and the soul it contained burnt out or drained for whatever brief power surge they could give to whichever angel, of whichever side, had needed it at the time.

And here, in one corner, viciously colourful against the dull lightlessness, there spun a carousel.

 _Oh_ , said Castiel. _American Gods_.

Lucifer wrinkled his nose delicately, and laid his hand on the writhing red dragon.

“I suppose this is meant for me.”

Castiel looked at the other creatures—at the wild-eyed goat, at the snarling lion, at the proud strutting black cock and grey cat who walked by himself and the red flame-winged bird rising from its own ashes.

 _I think whichever one you choose is the one meant for you_ , he said.

Lucifer’s feathers ruffled with a clatter like scraps of tin. “Enough, Castiel.”

He chose the gilded white horse, with silver wings stretched far in flight.

The carousel spun, and Heaven faded around them.

When another ‘reality’ resolved around them, it was a dingy carpark on a stormy night. A hotel loomed above them, and in the distance was the low growl of a small motorway. Rain drenched the tarmac around them, soaked the half-hearted bushes, and glistened on the neon of the sign that read _Elysian Fields_.

Castiel frowned, and searched his memory for all the literary references that might help him. _I do not know this place._

“I do,” said Lucifer. _It’s where I killed him._

 

***

 

_Earlier_

Lucifer liked to watch.

Specifically, he liked to watch Sam Winchester.

Sam would be furious if he knew the attention with which his old adversary cherished every twitch of his fingers, every curve of his mouth, the vibration of his voice in his chest. It wasn’t every hour, every moment; but if Lucifer had nothing else to think of, his attention always wandered _there_ , to that bright particular star on his consciousness of the world. Sam would have been furious, at Lucifer, and at Castiel for not stopping him. But Castiel had learned to pick his battles.

Lucifer tuned in all at once to a flare of pain from Sam.

Alex Jones had kicked him in the shin.

“Um,” said Sam, and smiled at her uncomfortably. She was blocking the doorway. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and she was glaring. “I’m just here to be yelled at, aren’t I?”

She shrugged. “Pretty much.”

Lucifer stirred, dissatisfied, and drummed his fingers on the arm of his throne.

Demons came, demons went. Lucifer oversaw their doings with imperious and lazy style, and listened in between times to Sam’s conversation over the dinner table with Jody, Claire, and Alex.

None of the three were impressed that the Winchesters had not told them about Lucifer before Claire had almost been choked to death. They were less impressed when Sam did his best to appraise them on the current situation without worrying them, or implied that he would give Jody a fuller account later on when the girls weren’t listening. Jody would not take his part: she insisted on Claire and Alex knowing everything, and Castiel himself felt tempted to squirm with sympathy whenever he listened. And then:

“I—don’t know,” said Sam quietly, to his peas. “He said it was because he felt as though he needed to help. To tell the truth I’ve—we’ve never been very good at knowing what Castiel is thinking—guessing what he’s going to do. I guess that’s part of the whole angel thing, y’know? He’s just—never all there with you at once.”

Castiel found himself oddly uncomfortable with the idea of Dean and Sam talking about him when he wasn’t there.

“Why is it that the dark evil primordial power is always female anyway,” said Alex, some time later, mostly joking. “That’s sexist. I mean, you said angels aren’t really male or female, right? And God’s like an angel but _more_ , so why do we always get God called _he_?”

Sam cleared his throat and tried not to smile. “I... uh, think Amara’s probably older than feminism.”

“Well, duh.” Claire bristled on Alex’s behalf. “She’s older than gender. Wasn’t life just like asexual blobs for most of its history? So how does God get a sister?”

Jody raised an eyebrow, and looked at Sam. Castiel was surprised to find it wasn’t a challenging look like the girls’, or a scolding one. It was interested, and a little teasing, and there was a heat in there that suggested this was not the first such look that she and Sam had exchanged.

“Huh,” she said; and Sam thrilled inside at the tone, a shy flicker of incredulous wonder that he could be _wanted_ by such a woman, a slow burn of interest, and the easy roll of mature confidence over the top of that which had him quirking a subtle eyebrow at her and smiling back.

“I’d guess it’s a metaphor,” he said: “just because she’s taken a female form this time. The angels seem kind of used to using ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ according to the vessel that—”

Lucifer winced, and squirmed away from Sam’s feelings with what felt like disgust.

“Castiel.”

_Yes?_

Lucifer positively pouted. “You’ve hardly said anything all day. You didn’t even think sarcastic thoughts when I made that demon cry. What’s got you distracted—what’s more important than me?”

Castiel thought that Lucifer probably meant to be ironic when he said that sort of thing, but he didn’t do it very well.

 _Nothing important. That is_ , when Lucifer did the mental equivalent of raising a sarcastic eyebrow, _I cannot convince myself that it would provide any tactical advantage._

“You have spent all day trying to convince yourself that it would?” drawled Lucifer. “Anybody would think you didn’t trust me, little brother.”

 _This would have supplemented our plan, not replaced it,_ replied Castiel mildly; _but I don’t think—no. I do not think the idea would please you. It is nothing, Lucifer._

“You should know me better than that. I will decide for myself what pleases me, and what is _tactical_. Tell me, Castiel.”

_Do not ask me, brother._

“Castie-el,” sang Lucifer, sweet and dangerous. “Do not _tempt_ me, brother.”

And so Castiel demurred, and allowed the devil to draw it imperiously out of him: what he had considered and what he knew, and what might be done.

Lucifer did not like it; but he could not admit that now. Nor could he allow his feelings to get in the way of strategy, or of his pride. He could only call Castiel a fool for not bringing it to his attention sooner, and take the idea as his own.


	2. Chapter 2

“You know I was just trying to protect you all, right?” said Sam.

“Uh-huh. And I believe that you believe that, Winchester.”

He was leaning against the counter in the kitchen, drying dishes as Jody handed them to him, and sipping at his wine glass between times.

He shrugged with one shoulder—a bit sheepish, but smiling, not feeling that he needed to defend himself here in this house.

“You two,” she said—smiling back, and stepping in a little closer than necessary to hand him two bowls. “You’ve been isolated too long, you know that? You never even _thought_ of telling us, because that’d be letting us in on your besieged little world.”

Sam huffed a chuckle, and looked down at his hands as he dried the bowls, then back up to meet her look. “I’d really like to be able to argue with that.”

She took them, when they were dry, and set them aside—took the dishcloth and hung it on the oven door—cocked an eyebrow at him without moving out of his space. “Well, Sam Winchester?”

He kept her gaze, but the smile fell away from his face as he reached out, laid his hands on her hips, ran them up her sides and pressed his fingers carefully in against her ribs.

“I don’t know how to ask anymore, Jody. Not just—I mean, even normal daily things, of friends. All I know now is life and death conversations. Or how to interrogate people for a case. I don’t know how to _chat_.”

“Been there, done that,” she said wryly. “The girls saved me from it, you know?”

He sighed, and drew her in, and pressed his lips against her hair. She put a thumb on his chin, and turned his face down to her, lined their bodies up together and kissed his mouth. He followed willingly, carefully, with a gentleness that meant he had years of frustration and strength held in check; and she exhaled against his mouth as if she felt it too, and their blood heated up at the same time.

Lucifer withdrew. These feelings, Castiel had noticed, were not ones that drew him: anything that smacked of sex, or romance, or bodily fluids, revolted him on an almost physical level, and drove his attention away.

 

***

 

Metatron did his best to bluster, in his narratively appropriate box under a bridge.

While he thought he had only Castiel to deal with, he smirked and he cowered and he declaimed and he bargained. He did as he always did: tried to hold the knowledge in his head hostage against a settlement far greater than it was worth.

When he realised who else was standing in front of him, he lost all his words.

Lucifer drawled, and rolled his eyes, and casually picked Metatron up by the hair; and, when the information they needed was not immediately forthcoming amongst the tremors and the pleas, he slid like a knife into Metatron’s memories and took everything he knew, as simply as that.

Then he dropped him to the guano-coated concrete, mortal and half-starved and bereft of every bargaining chip.

“Tell me,” he purred, “you who pride yourself on _stories_ —if an eternity as a vulture’s hors d’œuvres is the appropriate punishment for stealing fire from heathen gods, what should happen to the angel who steals my Father’s tablets, throws all the other angels out of Heaven, imprisons an archangel, pretends to _be_ an archangel, and aspires to be more?”

 _You don’t think this is enough?_ remarked Castiel, looking around at the squalor and the filth, and within to Metatron’s horror at his own disgusting mortality.

“Castiel,” Metatron gasped, “we always were good friends, weren’t we? We always understood each other.”

Castiel flinched and recoiled; and Lucifer chuckled, and brought his heel down on Metatron’s hand. It cracked and squashed.

“I don’t think you could begin to comprehend my little brother, dearest renegade. Let me see: no eagles and vultures for you. Wings are too noble and fine an invention of my Father’s genius.”

He crouched down, and pressed their hand to Metatron’s stomach.

Maggots; maggots under the skin, devouring the flesh, invisible to human detection and surgery. Metatron would be eaten from the inside (as Lucifer explained to him in excruciating detail); and it would take weeks, and there would be no saving him.

 _Just kill him_ , Castiel was finally driven to plead, though he had no love for Metatron; but Lucifer smiled his slow smile, and shook his head.

They left Metatron under his bridge.

 

***

 

Sam’s hand was curled lightly around Jody’s shoulder, in the soft darkness of her bed. She held his other hand between hers, resting on her stomach, rubbing her thumb back and forth over one of his fingers. Their bodies hummed with sated happiness, and Castiel felt an odd pang of yearning. He felt Lucifer tracing over every point where their bodies touched, the shape they made together on the bed, fascinated and repelled.

“You can stay another night, can’t you?” she murmured; and when Sam nodded against the pillow, she smiled at the ceiling. “Then one of us is heading to the drug store first thing in the morning for condoms. Don’t get me wrong, this was amazing, but I really want to feel all of you at once.”

Sam chuckled, and ran his tongue over his lips. “Got it.”

His phone hummed on the floor by the bed, and he rolled onto his stomach to pick it up and read a text from Dean. Just checking in: just (Castiel could not help but feel) restless and unsettled all alone in the bunker, without his brother nearby.

Sam texted back he’d stay another night, make sure they were okay. Dean’s sarcastic reply made Castiel smile, and reach out toward him in spirit just as Lucifer’s thoughts were drawn always toward Sam (and yet not _quite_ the same).

 _Work the case if you’re bored,_ Sam shot back. _Hell, call Castiel over for company. Netflix and chill with Lucifer._

But Castiel couldn’t see Dean yet—not yet. Not until he was in a position to ask the unconscionable question.

 _Go screw yourself_ , grumbled Dean’s reply; and Sam smirked, and dropped the phone on his jeans, and rolled in against Jody who had been running a hand up and down the curve of his back in the dark.

“Can’t do without you for one night?” she yawned; and Sam sighed, and tucked his face in against her shoulder.

“Honestly? I don’t think either of us know what to do with ourselves without the other one anymore. Sometimes I’m not sure we’re still two separate people.”

 

***

 

_Now_

Mercury was stationed at the reception desk. He had wings on his heels and his temples, and two snakes winding around his body, and he looked at Lucifer with eyes the colour and softness of marble even as he smiled and thanked him for coming.

Lucifer turned away from him, and stalked past the reception desk toward the corridor. But Mercury was suddenly in front of him again, all chipper attitude and unforgiving eyes, as he repeated his opening speech.

Lucifer sighed, with exaggerated impatience.

“Really, brother?” he said to the ceiling. “Do we have to go through _all_ of _this_ again? I know you were fond of your little pagan pets, but it’s time to talk like grown-ups, don’t you think?”

Mercury still blocked his way. Lucifer reached out and broke his neck.

As the bone snapped, and Lucifer’s grace dealt the same death blow to the god’s core as his fingers did to its body, Mercury changed. The dark hair and neat suit fizzed out like a bad illusion and there was left only the archangel Gabriel itself, eyes wide with horror, as it slumped to the ground at Lucifer’s feet.


	3. Chapter 3

Lucifer stood very still for a moment. There was no reaction in body or mind or feeling or grace save _whiteness_ and cold, burning cold.

But just as the feelings came swirling up, overwhelming and ugly and despairing, the body on the floor shimmered again, and returned to Mercury’s form. And a ghost-like Mercury rose up to stand over it, and smirked Gabriel’s smirk.

 _You know I began as an angel, right? I was your brother once too? Hardly even remember that, to be honest: wasn’t my thing. I haven’t been that for a long time: far longer than_ that _brother’s been playing at Loki. I was known for my wings, for the swiftness of my travel. I was the messenger,_ Ἑρμῆς Ἄγγελος _. I could slip between worlds and pantheons, and I did. I chose my own family, Lucifer: I made myself what I am and was in this world. I have thousands of stories to my names and I have always been_ myself _. What are you, who clung to grudges under the world for thousands of years and couldn’t let go of his first story, to say who I am?_

Lucifer could not move. The shock was wearing off, but it had left his grace leaden and treacherous. He hung where he was with Mercury’s shade suspended in front of him, upbraiding him with Gabriel’s voice.

_This is my story. This is who I was, you arrogant dick, and you took me, and you made me a footnote in your own petty tale._

Then corpse and shade faded, and there was blood on Lucifer’s hands, and he twisted his face into a smirk and said, “You always were _subtle_ , little brother,” and strode on toward the ballroom.

He knocked Odin to the ground, drove a stake of oak through his heart, and crushed his head with his foot. Gabriel’s wings flashed in charcoal on the floor and its hand grasped at Lucifer’s ankle for one fitful moment. Lucifer’s whole self flinched like raw flesh at the crack of a whip, but this time he stared grimly until the vision faded and the shade rose up.

Odin mocked him, grizzled and hoar as the oak, ravens croaking derisively from his branches and the folds of his tattered grey cloak. He claimed to himself the title of Father, of Allfather, and a starring role in the end of Time, and brotherhood with Loki.

 _I will die and rise again_ , he laughed as he faded. _Did you think that story was yours alone, boy?_

The six-legged elephant charged him; and Lucifer hesitated a moment before flinging a bolt of raw sound and heat at him, so intense that he was transfixed, then exploded all over the walls. Just for that one moment Gabriel’s face looked out at them again; then it was gone.

The pain of it clenched tighter around Lucifer’s core with each death.

 _Your Father is not a god_ , said Ganesh with scorn. _He is only a creator. A god knows who and what it is. A god is worshipped._

“He is worshipped in every land, in every century!”

 _Under too many names. When was the last time you heard him speak?_ _A being that is everything to everybody is nothing to himself._

“Our Father created the world.”

_Everybody believes in some Creator. It doesn’t follow that that is any more important that the god who takes care of you from day to day. No matter where that god began: man or monster or river or dream._

Ganesh faded.

Lucifer’s anger began to rise, turbulent and cold. “Games, little brother, games. If you want me penitent and begging for _forgiveness_ like one of your precious humans—”

Samedi’s fist, heavy with centuries of resentment, slammed toward Lucifer’s face. Lucifer took it and twisted off his arm, dismembering the idea and spirit of him as he dismembered the body that was his symbol. Blood covered him. Lucifer sneered wordlessly through it, furious with pain, and the stare he turned on Samedi’s shade was pure ice.

“‘No one makes us do anything,’ Gabriel. Remember that? Didn’t come here to fight you, but you never could just let things go, could you?”

Control, then. Gabriel was enjoying making Lucifer dance to its tune. Goading him into retracing the steps that he had taken last time, indulging Gabriel’s own taste for drama to re-stage the last showdown?

But no. An epic battle—that would be what Lucifer expected. That would be what Gabriel the archangel would have done. It was what Gabriel _had_ done, when he’d tried to become the archangel again, and he’d died for it, because Lucifer was better at the archangel game than Gabriel was and would never have expected anything else from him. But there was more to Gabriel than that now.

Castiel thought privately, from the depths of the vessel-form that Lucifer had been forced back into by the nature of this Earth-like illusion, that perhaps he might know the Trickster version of Gabriel better than Lucifer ever could.

Gabriel was angry; but it was also trying to teach.

Samedi spoke of centuries in Africa, of existing in many forms and many names in many nations, and becoming one coherent idea only in America, with generations of slavery and colonialism. He spoke of a birth in misery and oppression and diminution, of being the meanest and the lowest while he raged with all the fury of denial; he spoke of his people being perverted into gibbering monsters, and being born an indignant monster himself.

He spoke of appropriation—a second colonialism—and of becoming a gimmick.

He said to Lucifer, _look at all the stories within me, all the stories that make me, that made me in every year since I was thought of, look at what you dare to erase._

Lucifer stared through him, learning to be indifferent. Then he walked on.

The gods came at him, and he killed them: again, and again, and again, each of them turning into Gabriel as they died and flinging their histories in Lucifer’s faces, their histories that he erased. He ignored them, stormed on past them, slammed through the doors into the ballroom with arms covered in blood—

—and they dropped into darkness.

They were back on the carousel, which floated in formless black. But this time it was threaded through with glowing lines, traps and wards, and Castiel could _feel_ the bindings pressing in on his grace, holding him powerless where he was.

But it wasn’t only that which made the breath Castiel didn’t need catch in a throat he didn’t have, which sickened him with the sensation of a heart pounding too fast and the dizziness of days of hunger. It was the blackness—that feeling of being swamped, drawn down, deadened, swallowed deep in oily inky water that laughed maliciously and tore fangs into the centre of his sense of _self_.

He was drowning, powerless; and the fear came racing down his throat, the fear of death and failure and of abandoning Dean and of being lost amongst so many other selves that there would be no Castiel left.

 _Listen to me, little bird,_ came Lucifer’s rough voice in his mind. _Come back to me_.

Castiel was held—not trapped and contained, but cradled—stable and careful, in the strongest brightest grace he had ever known. And there was love there, of a strange violent rusty kind.

The panic rushed over him and ebbed into the distance, but it didn’t carry him along with it. He was not in that lake, devoured by Leviathan. He was here, and steady, and safe.

They hung there: Lucifer’s raging charge suspended, the pound of fury and the bright flare of battle grace easing gradually like a heartbeat returning to its regular pace. There were two of them again now, no longer trapped in the illusion of a vessel: overlapping in their true forms, but distinct beings. And Lucifer reached out with his branches to draw Castiel closer, to press one face into his wing with a hiss like a sigh.

“Why did I let you talk me into this, Castiel?”

Castiel drew long, gentle tendrils over the scarred silk of one of Lucifer’s wings, and warmed him.

“You didn’t,” he said, leaning into his brother’s strength. “You were adamantly against my doing so. I did it anyway. You agreed for reasons both of practicality and affection.”

Lucifer huffed his disgust at that last word; and Castiel gave him a stern look, and suggested, “Remorse?”

The jackal near the centre of the carousel threw back its enamelled head, and cackled long and loud.

“Heya Castiel!” it said brightly. “Gotta say, kid, took you long enough to find me. There’s only so many times a guy can marathon _So You Think You Can Dance_ , y’know.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Really, Gabriel?” said Lucifer, and winced dramatically. “To the seraph?”

“Huh,” said the carousel jackal, and scratched its ear lazily. “You hear somebody talking, Castiel? Maybe a cricket got in here. Or a camel. Clinging to some driftwood. Happens all the time.”

“Hello, Gabriel,” said Castiel.

He heard his own voice smile, even through his dour tones, and he reached out for Gabriel with all the warmest breezes of his core: gladness and relief, because he hadn’t been _sure_ , not even after they had confronted Metatron. But Gabriel was here; and it was still Gabriel.

“You know, little bro,” said the jackal cheerfully, “some people are really bad at realising when something isn’t _all about them_. Even when you smack them in the face with it. So, nice of you to drop by, kid, it’s been a couple of years. I’d offer you tea and biscuits, but they only come in manna flavour. Hey, thanks for bringing me some gullible schmuck to charge my batteries up, like we agreed!”

It was impossible for Castiel to roll his eyes in true form, because he had nothing analogous to eyes. None of his organs was dedicated so specifically to one sense or so dependant on environmental factors as that. He could, however, _think_ an eyeroll; and, with their communicatory senses buzzing at the same frequency, the other two would feel it in him.

“All this time, Gabriel,” purred Lucifer, “all this time to think about a stinging comeback, and that’s the best you could come up with? Gotta say, little brother, even for you, that’s a pretty feeble attempt at shit-stirring. I mean, I’ve been in this kid’s head, literally. I’d know if he was looking to double-cross me.”

“Oh, I’ve got so many comebacks,” said the jackal airily. “I was going to start with ‘Well, well, well!’. Or maybe ‘Et tu, Lucy?’. Under the circs, I might even go with ‘look what the Cas dragged in’. But hey, right now you just don’t look that interesting. Mind putting a cork in it so I can talk to the brother I like? Thanks ever so.”

“Tell me,” said Castiel mildly, “the elaborate welcoming set-up designed around teaching Lucifer a lesson—that was intended to convince us that not everything is about him?”

“Didn’t that go down perfectly?” said the jackal, licking its chops. “So deliciously arrogant, so certain he knows the story. Still determined to rush forward to the boss battle no matter who stands in his way, not stopping to chat to the quest npcs.”

“And I see your sense of humour is still as subtle as ever,” said Lucifer impatiently.

“Please,” scoffed the jackal. “I am subtlety itself. Subtle like a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.”

“I will not beg for forgiveness, brother.”

Just for a moment, there was a real snarl in the curl of the jackal’s mouth. “I was not made for forgiveness, brother.”

“You drove me to it, Gabriel. It was on you.”

“You killed me because I would not join you in destroying everything Dad made.”

“In purifying it. In carrying out his plan. And they call me traitor!”

The jackal froze back into an inanimate fairground ride. When Gabriel’s voice next sounded, it was from a crouching, leering ape, poking its head out from behind the central pillar.

“Plans change. Dad left.”

“So did you.” Lucifer spoke light with contempt, but Castiel, entangled as they were, felt the ache deep as ages under there. “What did Michael think of that, little brother?”

“Screw Michael. How’s he doing downstairs, by the way? Did you just leave him to sing his kumbayas onhis own or did you shiv him before you skipped the joint? Guessing he didn’t bust out with you or I’d have heard the screams and the slamming of the headboard even in here.”

“Your mind is sickened and foul,” said Lucifer. “And I say that as the father of sin.”

The ape smirked. “I know you are, you said you are, but what am I?”

“You are two of the three oldest sentient beings in Creation,” observed Castiel, impatient in the aftershocks of his panic. “I’m sure you can find rhetorical tactics that would not be considered immature by ten-year-old humans.”

“Ah, but we aren’t the oldest though, are we, little bird? That’s why we’re here.”

“ _She_ hardly counts. She oughtn’t be sentient at all.”

“Well, in that case, neither should Father.”

Castiel frowned, as something that the shade of Ganesh had said resonated strangely in his memory. “Are you sure he is?”

It was a perplexing thought. Lucifer only stared at him for a moment and dismissed it, and Castiel himself had no time to understand it before the ape was waving its hands in the air and saying, “Uh, guys? Kind of missed the exposition here, but in case you’re wondering, yeah, I did figure that you wouldn’t bother to come from me unless you thought I was _useful_. So what big nasty have you dredged up this year? Apart from, y’know, dearest bro here.”

Castiel took the task of explanation on himself. The ape’s painted orange eyes and painted grinning teeth revealed nothing of Gabriel’s thoughts.

He explained about Amara’s awakening; about her incarnation; about her disturbing connection to Dean and her power over him; about her determination to undo all their Father’s work, and his belief that the strength of archangels was the surest defence of Creation against Destruction.

“And so you sprang _him_ from the Cage. The one I helped put him in. That’s your first move.” The ape whistled, and grinned, too wide. “Cassie Cassie Cas. It’s always one apocalypse after another with you guys, isn’t it?”

“You think _your_ strength would do more than give her a paper cut?” scoffed Lucifer. “Please. I don’t need you to help me, Gabriel. I can do it alone. I just thought I’d give you a second chance.”

“Oh, that’s right.” The ape held up one finger. “Because I ‘learned all my tricks from you’, is that it? ‘Cos here’s the catch, sandstone-for-brains: I learned all _your_ tricks from you. Then I spent a few thousand years out in the world learning everyone’s tricks from everyone. While you sat alone in a cage and brooded, and thought you had nothing more to learn. And right now, FYI? You’re at _my_ mercy. You’re bound in my cage, brother, and you’ll be leaving when I say.”

Tricks...

Lucifer folded his metaphorical arms and glared. Gabriel fell silent. Lucifer said nothing.

Gabriel cracked first.

The ape scratched its groin.

“Soooo, topside again, huh? You finally browbeat the Winchester schmuck into letting you under his skirts, or you just wafting about watching people get naked and whispering fart jokes to altar boys?”

“Castiel is my vessel.”

The ape snorted. “Funny.”

Lucifer shrugged. Castiel nodded absently.

The ape looked back and forth between them, seeing the ways in which they were tangled up, looking closer. Then it whistled.

“I spend a year or ten dead, and suddenly everybody goes all to hell.”

“ _Gabriel_ ,” said Lucifer—almost reproving, but it was hiding a suddenly burst of amusement, almost of laughter, bringing with it a devastating affection.

... It was impossible for Gabriel to bind them. Castiel had Gabriel’s grace, cradled close in the core of him, and that meant that all Gabriel had to work with was what it had had when Metatron had sent it to Castiel: the power of illusion. It was only the Trickster; but its illusions were (almost) flawless, and they fooled all the senses. Sight, and sound, and smell, and touch, and taste, and time—then why not angelic senses as well?

Castiel turned, and walked out of the trap.

The black landscape of Heaven reappeared under his feet, and the stifling sensation of bound grace vanished like cobwebs.

He looked back to face the gaudy bright carousel, misted over and glittering with the true form of Lucifer, many thousand times too big for the space it seemed to occupy. Gabriel, he still could not see.

Castiel was tired, and irritable, and the strange feeling that had been plaguing him for days—the feeling of being both weaker and safer than he had ever been—was wearing on his patience. Though not nearly so much as the eternal squabbling of archangels.

“‘I always run,’” he growled. “‘I don’t want to run anymore. I want to do what I was meant to do.’”

“Hey,” protested the ape weakly. “I was playing a part, okay? That was what you needed to hear, so that’s what I told you.”

Castiel uncoiled the precious spark of Gabriel’s grace from deep within itself and held it up: an offering. “Forgiveness is not _earned_ , Gabriel. I should know. It’s given. Maybe we never can deserve it.”

“Sure you believe that, kid?” said Gabriel’s voice, almost gentle. “’Cos you look like you’ve been trying too hard for it for too long.”

Lucifer began to speak, but Castiel overrode him. “Forgive me, Gabriel.”

He felt the attention of both poised on him for a moment, sharp and surprised; and he seized it and pushed on, “Forgive us all. Forgive the world, for its thanklessness.”

Gabriel did not respond, which in Gabriel was response enough. Lucifer stirred, stretched his form out from the illusory confines of the carousel, and grumbled with something like condescension and something like longing, “Isn’t that what you said you admire about them? The way they try to _forgive_?”

Castiel carefully refrained from mentioning Lucifer’s own reluctant fascination with humans and their feelings and stories, these last few weeks.

“... Fine,” Gabriel snapped after a minute or an age, and the ape froze back into what it had been so that Gabriel’s voice came from nowhere. “I’ll give you this. Find me, darling brother of mine, and I’ll come with you.”

Lucifer looked around at all the animals, in their monstrous and delicate colours: proud curved necks and grinning twisted mouths and legs, a strange riot of innocence and distortion. Then he rested his caress on the flames that streamed down the neck of the phoenix. They were hot, and squirmed under the touch.

“Huh,” said Gabriel. “Really? Not, you know, the goat, or the eight-legged horse, or the snake?”

“No,” said Lucifer. “This one. This one is you.”

Gabriel snorted, and suddenly it was there: all of it, bright and familiar and strong, lounging behind Lucifer in the carousel.

“Actually,” it said brightly, “I was all of them. Who said a guy has to stick to one thing at once? But it’ll do. Hand over the sparklies, little bro. But you know my vessel’s dust, right?”

Lucifer waved that objection off, tamping down the swirl of emotion stirred in his colours by Gabriel’s agreement. “We have another for you.”

Castiel winced. “He has agreed provisionally—”

Gabriel sneered. “What, some poor deluded fanatic who doesn’t know what he’s letting himself in for and will turn to haggis in a week?”

“No,” said Castiel, bristling. “He understands. And he will not—fall apart.”

Gabriel stared at him. Then it said, “Shit.” Then it reached out to take its grace from Castiel’s keeping, and said, “Well hey, it’ll make a change to be tall again.”


	5. Chapter 5

 

_Earlier._

 

Dean didn’t pray to Castiel, not anymore. Now that he wasn’t desperate he had withdrawn. He made no overtures. He asked no questions. He let Sam take the lead, when Castiel and Lucifer came for visits, in deciding on activities and managing their execution. “Double dates”, he had called them once, but had not said how he considered them paired off. To Sam fell the duty of representing humanity to Lucifer, as perhaps it had always done: of giving him, like Scheherazade, something that might persuade him to let them live just one more day.

Dean had hovered over Castiel, at first, demanding that Lucifer let him speak and touching his arm and shoulder and making him eat. Then within two days it had all changed to grunts, and shrugs, and unsubtle reproach.

Castiel knew better than to take offence. He didn’t deserve any kind of trust.

When he knocked at the bunker, Dean didn’t look surprised or welcoming. He just leaned in the doorway, not quite out of the shelter of its wards, and said, “Who’s talking?”

“Dean, it’s me.”

“Well, Sam ain’t here. Tell the Prince of Darkness he can come and play getting-to-know-you conkers with my brother another time.”

Castiel frowned. “Is that a euphemism.”

Dean gaped. “What? No! It’s—it was just a bad joke, Cas, forget it.”

“So are many of your euphemisms,” Castiel pointed out.

Dean rolled his eyes. Castiel looked at him, trying to see through the layers of self-denial and resentment and crusted old fear to the medley of half-realised feelings that would let him glimpse what Dean was thinking right now. It was a familiar task, and it never got any easier.

“Dean, I have to talk to you.”

Dean grunted. “He listening?”

“No,” said Castiel, treading carefully around saying that Lucifer was usually eager to avoid the feelings that spun around Castiel and Dean even in ordinary conversations. “I... refused to speak to you on this subject unless it could be done unobserved. We are as alone as it is possible to be.”

“Okay,” said Dean, “well. I’m human, Cas, and it’s eight in the freakin’ morning. I need coffee.”

The door closed.

Castiel stood awkwardly outside.

The door opened again after a few seconds and Dean’s head poked through.

“Uh. You want...?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Okay.” Dean rubbed at his mouth, and popped back in.

They ended up sitting on the ledge over the door of the bunker, legs swinging, with coffee and sandwiches. The bread tasted of molecules; but they were more than just themselves, because yesterday they had been flour and yeast and salt and seeds and water, and they been shaped by Dean’s hands into one new thing, kneaded and pressed with something like love.

Dean was very attached to his body. He lived in it entirely.

Castiel ached, and ate without speaking until he could not put it off anymore.

They knew where Gabriel was, he explained; they had retrieved his grace on Metatron’s information, and meant to retrieve him; they would bring him back, and he would join the fight against Amara. But he would need...

Dean cupped his chilly fingers around the steaming mug. “Can’t he use his old vessel?”

“It doesn’t exist anymore.” Castiel paused. “People who can contain an archangel are... rare, Dean.”

He felt it, the shock of realisation and dread that flashed through Dean like fire.

“No,” Dean said flatly, automatically. “Not again.”

“I wouldn’t ask if—”

“Nobody’s getting up in Sam’s head, Cas. Nothing’s worth that. I’m not doing that to him again.”

“Oh,” said Castiel. “Dean—”

He stopped, and looked down at his coffee, at Dean’s boot heels stiff and still against the rock that they had been casually kicking a few moments before. Then he shook his head.

“Lucifer said the same thing,” he said quietly. “Though from rather different motivations, I expect.”

Dean’s breath stuttered for a moment, almost like relief, or a laugh. Castiel loved that in him, yearningly—the way Dean’s body could seem to say so many things at once and yet so coherently, so expressively, that it made Castiel ache to read it.

“Back the fuck up— _me_?” The coffee mug clunked to the rock by Castiel’s thigh and spilled its contents, rich and steaming in the cold air. “You want me to say yes to that son of a bitch? We’re back here again, Cas? Back where we were in the apocalypse, only you’re on the other side.”

Dean was on his feet—stalking away, stalking back, as if he’d reached the end of an invisible tether. Castiel stayed where he was, hunched over his own cup.

“Maybe the apocalypse never ended, Dean. Earth and heaven and hell have been fighting for years, and every time we seem to fight it back it ends up worse than before. Perhaps Michael and Lucifer were merely mistaken as to their roles: they were only to begin it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dean muttered. His boots scuffed their way across the rocks, up and back, up and back.

Castiel stood up, and turned to face him. Dean’s face was white and set, and he wouldn’t meet Castiel’s eyes.

“I understand that—that your concept of autonomy is different to mine, and your concept of violation. I know consent would mean worse to you than it does to me.”

Dean did turn to him then, with too much in his eyes and soul, and the kind of entreaty in his clenched hands that Castiel did not know how to reject. “Please Cas, just—tell me it’s you talking right now. Promise me. I couldn’t bear it if—I don’t trust myself to recognise _you_ anymore.”

“Dean.”

He reached out helplessly and laid a hand on Dean’s jaw, though he knew he must not. Dean didn’t pull away: he almost leaned into it, body and soul, and Castiel yielded to that thing behind his ribs that was always drawing them in.

Their foreheads pressed together; their noses almost touched, and Castiel could feel the short, hot pants of Dean’s breath dry against his mouth.There was yearning in the clutch of Dean’s fingers at his waist, danger in the thud of his own heart; and Castiel felt Lucifer, somewhere, grumble and tuck himself in tighter and deeper away from the rush of feeling.

“This is different, Dean, you must see that. Submitting to Michael—that would have been giving up. Erasing yourself. This—this will be you fighting with what you have.”

“That what it was for you, Cas?”

And it _was_ , he was sure it was, and the outcome had justified him so far; and surely it was only Dean’s tone of voice, only Castiel’s habit of assuming that Dean must _always_ be right, that made him pause and waver.

“Don’t say it, buddy,” implored Dean, to whatever he heard in the silence—“don’t you tell me that, Castiel.”

“I... believe that since consenting to Lucifer I have materially altered our chances for the better.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” Castiel said, and stared at the inside of his eyelids with the old helplessness rising again. He was proud of what he had done—he _remembered_ being proud. “I will—I will prove it to you, Dean. You’ll see.”

“Even if it all goes arse-up.”

“It usually does.”

“Yeah.”

One more breath, one more moment. Then Dean pulled back, patted Castiel’s cheek as if it were a casual touch, and cleared his throat.

“You’d better get going, buddy. Heaven won’t wait.”

“Yes it will,” said Castiel, puzzled.

“Jesus.” Dean almost laughed. “Hurry back. Just. Uh, Cas? Don’t tell Sam.”

Castiel gave him a stern look. “Will you?”

“I’ll tell him when he needs to know,” Dean replied shortly; which probably meant, at the worst possible moment, when there was no avoiding it anymore.

Adam’s face flashed across Dean’s memory, so stark and sharp and coloured with guilt that Castiel could not have avoided seeing it if he’d tried. Dean’s last encounter with Gabriel was mixed up with that, in his mind: with letting that other unknown brother down, and with almost giving in to Michael.

Castiel turned, to stretch his wings for flight, because looking on Dean’s face would mean too much.

“Cas—”

“Yes, Dean?”

“Nothing, I—” Dean looked away, ran his fingers through his hair, and huffed. “Forget it.”

Then he folded Castiel into a hug.

Oh. _Oh_.

Castiel stood numb and stiff for a moment. Then something broke inside and he melted, gave in to self-delusion and the aching illusion of being allowed to stay, of being valued and cherished here. He clung, too tight. Then he was actually sobbing, strange and wild, almost without knowing what he felt or whether he was feeling anything at all, as if the vessel was doing it all on its own.

Castiel did his best to apologise, because this was ridiculous, and to Dean tears meant weakness, and to _them_ it meant things they never spoke of; but he could not find his voice.

It was a different kind of possession, this complete abandonment and uncontrol, and Castiel did not like it. Lucifer, perhaps—? but no, Lucifer was as distant from the moment as it was possible to be. It was all the warmth and promise of Dean’s body, and the smell of his shirt crumpled under Castiel’s nose, and his hand rubbing between Castiel’s shoulder blades, and the rapid pound of his heart inside him, and his voice, alarmed and rough and soft like it went when Sam was sick or tired: “Whoa. Whoa, there, buddy. Let it go. I got you.”

It was only then that the feelings came. And they weren’t what Castiel was expecting: it was such a rush of gladness and joy and despair that he lost himself for a while in all of it and couldn’t force words out of his throat if he had wanted to, if it hadn’t been choked with crying.

“We’ll get rid of him, Cas, I promise. We’ll get him out. I got you, buddy.” Dean’s arms were fierce and sure around him as Lucifer’s protective grasp, but his hand in Castiel’s hair was as tentative and tender as Lucifer could never be.

“No, no, it isn’t that. Not Lucifer, it’s—he’s good. I mean, having him. It’s—that’s not it, Dean, I don’t know what—I’m sorry, I don’t know _why_ I’m—”

“It happens, Cas. Just let it out.”

Castiel gave up, and the minutes passed, and Dean never pulled away, but held him close.

When Castiel’s breathing had eased, and he was left to wonder with something like reverence at the strange storm that had come on him out of nowhere, Dean stirred. It was only when he spoke that Castiel realised that Dean’s face was pressed into his hair.

“Talk to me, buddy.”

“I’m sorry, it just—it feels like some gate opened inside me when you held me, and it just—all rushed out. Like—like coming home.”

“Oh.”

“I think mostly... relief?”

“Um,” said Dean helplessly. “Yeah, that happens too sometimes, when you—you know, when you get someplace safe after you’ve been keeping a lid on things for a while—”

His mouth rested at Castiel’s temple, just where the hair began, so that when he spoke his lips brushed Castiel’s skin, disturbed his hair. It felt almost like a kiss; but it couldn’t be.

“I suppose it has been a while.” Castiel drew back enough to look at him. “I miss you, Dean.”

“Yeah,” said Dean gruffly. “Uh. You too, buddy. I... it’ll be good to have you back. You know. When...”

“No.” Castiel shook his head, held Dean’s gaze as fiercely as he could, as if he could make him understand. “I always miss you. This ache inside me—it’s been there for so long that sometimes I think it’s just a part of me.”

“Yeah, well.” Dean cleared his throat—stepped back, and clapped Castiel on the shoulder. Castiel could feel a deep ache at the loss, but he couldn’t tell whether it came from himself or from Dean. “We’ll—we’ll get rid of him, okay, Cas? Then we—yeah. Amara, and Lucifer. And—and Gabriel. We’ll fix it. You got that?”

Castiel sighed. “Yes, Dean. I got it.”

He gave Lucifer back his wings, and they flew.


	6. Chapter 6

_Castiel. Cas, I’m coming, I’m in the car, don’t let him do it. I know you can’t be on board with this, Cas. A voicemail. He left me a freakin’_ voicemail _. I’m going to kill him. Just—just stall until I get there, Cas, I’ll stop him. He’s just doing this because he feels guilty about you or some crap, or to stop me having to kill the Darkness, he wouldn’t really want to do this. Just don’t let him do it until I get there._

 

***

 

“I would give anything for you not to have to do this.”

“Yeah. You said that once before, buddy. Didn’t end well.”

Above and around them, invisible to the eye but mountain-vast, crouched the presence, waiting for the word.

“Gabriel is not Alistair, Dean. And you... we neither of us are what we were then.”

On a day in late spring, outside an old bunker near Lebanon, Dean Winchester said _yes_ to the archangel Gabriel.

 

***

 

By the time the Impala swerved into place in front of the bunker, nobody else was there; only a raven, watching from the trees with a beady black eye.


	7. Chapter 7

_One week later_

Gabriel dropped the topaz-set iron box on the old kitchen table with a flourish. Spirals of dust started into the air, managing to look as disgruntled about the disturbance as the house’s owner would have been.

“This”, said Gabriel, “is the reliquary that the sword of Judith _was_ held in.”

Lucifer eyed it, and sprawled into a rickety kitchen chair as if it were a throne.

“Nice box, little brother,” he said smoothly. “So did your _negotiations_ with my runaway puppy tell you where the sword itself might be?”

“Oh, I’ve got that.” Gabriel beamed, and popped another handful of hard candy into his mouth. “I’m just not giving it to you.”

“God give me strength,” said Lucifer. “Oh, wait.”

“That’s the fifth handful in eight minutes,” said Sam, through gritted teeth. “Did you know Dean gets migraines if he eats too much sugar?”

Gabriel glanced dismissively at the thunderous expression that Sam was levelling at him from the other side of Bobby’s kitchen.

“Why are they even here?”

Lucifer smirked. “I find him decorative. Her, I’m not sure about.”

“Uh-uh, bucko,” said Jody, and flashed her badge. “This country’s under the rule of law, not of God. If you boys are planning epic multi-dimensional wars on my turf, I’ll be sitting in.”

“And he has a point. You should take better care of your vessel, little brother.”

“Doth mine ear deceive me? He who burneth through his vessels like a jalapeno through a rectum?”

“ _I_ dispatch mine to their eternal reward as soon as they let me in,” said Lucifer primly.

“Yeah,” said Sam dryly, “thanks for that. It was great.”

“You were a special case.”

“And is Cas a special case? Or are you going to burn him out too?”

“Castiel isn’t a vessel,” said Lucifer dismissively. “We’re just house-sharing. And he never does the laundry.”

“That explains the wardrobe,” said Gabriel, spinning a chair around and sitting on it backwards with his chin plopped down on his hands. “You ought to jazz it up, Lucy. Something tailored and black, I think. Big dramatic coat with a flash of bright colour on the lining. Really expensive watch.”

Lucifer looked at him narrowly. “Surprisingly mild fashion advice, coming from you.”

“And yellow-spotted purple suspenders.”

“Ah, there’s my brother.”

“So,” said Sam loudly, “did anybody notice the world ending?”

“Mm. Did anybody notice my brother refusing to hand over the one object that could stop it?” drawled Lucifer.

Gabriel scoffed. “Please. Like I’m going to let _you_ get your hot little hands all over it. Judith would be appalled.”

“Cas-ti- _el_ ,” said Lucifer, in tones of exaggerated patience, “please explain to this manic little twerp just what the plan was again?”

“He knows the plan,” said Castiel mildly, as soon as Lucifer released control of the face and voice to him. “I suspect that, once he has done with baiting you, he will eventually tell us whatever alterations to it he has come up with. And Judith is dead, I’m afraid. Raphael killed her about eight months after you and Michael were locked in the Cage.”

“Well, crap,” said Gabriel. “This is what happens when you go afk for a couple of millennia. Half the party gets killed off and the boss breaks out and takes over the zone.”

“Judith, as in Judith and Holofernes?” put in Jody. “Do you mean she was actually an angel?”

“Started human, got a facelift. Happened a lot back in the day. Not so much since Dad forgot to come home from the pub. So, here’s a thought, o trigger-happy brother of mine: what exactly _are_ these hands of his?”

“A fragment of his power,” said Lucifer, enunciating slowly and deliberately.

“A _fragment_ ,” said Gabriel, and snapped up a cookie in Lucifer’s hands. “And she is _equal_ to Him. To _all_ of him. Getting the picture? A rancher doesn’t get into a butting contest with with a bull, bucko, but he brings him down all the same. ‘Cos he uses his strength _intelligently_. Like a _clever_ human. With common _sense_.”

“Your prose is about to collapse under the weight of those italics.”

“What do you suggest, _Gabriel_?” said Sam to his brother’s body, through gritted teeth.

“That’s a _buttload_ of _power_ in that _thing_ ,” said Gabriel cheerfully. “I _suggest_ that _we_ come _up_ with some _other_ way to _use_ it than throwing one _small_ nuclear warhead at a _larger_ nuclear warhead. Like, say, _constructing_ a _blast_ -proof zone to _trap_ it _._ ”

“Oh my god,” Sam muttered. “Never thought anybody else could make my brother’s voice sound more annoying than he does.”

“All part of the irritating little brother skill set!” said Gabriel grandly. “Isn’t it, Sammykins?”

 _Can we eat the cookie?_ said Castiel hopefully.

 _Your fascination with human food and feelings is strange and disturbing_ , said Lucifer, rather fondly. _And I believe it is flavoured with jalapenos_.

“The power of the Hand isn’t just in the weapon but in the hand that wields it,” he said aloud. “And I was the First and Brightest of God’s chosen. Together it would augment my power and I that of the hand, as a strong vessel does its host.”

Gabriel shrugged. “You dragged me out of my cosy little gaol cell to be an extra shot of caffeine in your war mug. I don’t play that game. I find my own ways to win; and they work, buster.”

Lucifer put the cookie on the table and waved his hand over it. “As they worked the time you left your ashes on the floor of the hotel,” he said, nodding. “I see.”

“Exactly,” said Gabriel, still playful, but with something iron underneath. “I went in too early. I made the mistake of charging against a bigger bull, and I got my head bashed in. If the game had been on my terms things would have ended very differently. And so will they this time.”

“Oh yes,” said Lucifer pleasantly, as three small chilli plants began to sprout from the cookie; “how?”

“’S’what we’ve got to figure, isn’t it? Brainstorming and butcher’s paper, boys! And girl,” Gabriel added, cocking a sarcastic eyebrow at Jody. “If you’ve got any suggestions for lassoing God’s pre-Creation dark twin, honeybunch. Personally I was figuring the Winchesters would be more help than you, Lucy baby. You’ve just never had to get creative about things because it’s so easy for you to just go smashy-smash.”

“In that case,” said Sam, with barely concealed anger, “why not actually let my brother out to talk for himself? Lucifer can let Castiel take over. Hell, Gadreel did it for me so smoothly I didn’t notice for freakin’ _months_.”

“Dean can’t come to the phone. He’s sulking because I wouldn’t let him watch pay-per-view last night.”

“Bullshit. Dean would be all over this.”

Gabriel shrugged. “Caught me. It’s my body just now, sweetums, and I like taking the wheel. Winchester mark one knew what he was getting into, or more precisely, what I was getting into, which was him, so. Here’s me. There’s him, and there he stays.”

“Can I just ask,” said Jody smoothly, “this is a council of war, yes? So we’re all meant to be allies in here. Is there anybody in this room, apart from yours truly, who is more interested in tackling the problem than antagonising everybody else?”

 _I am_ , thought Castiel; but Lucifer didn’t let him speak.

“Stop me if I’m wrong,” said Gabriel, barely noticing Jody, “but it was Winchester bungling and selfishness that let the Darkness out, right, which—let me think—sounds rather familiar—so it’s more your responsibility than ours to come up with a way to put it down again, whatever sacrifices you make in the process, huh? And that’s familiar too, isn’t it?”

“Wow,” said Sam. “You know, I remembered that you were a dick, but somehow I forgot that you were such a dick. Does _that_ sound familiar?”

Gabriel smirked, and fluttered Dean’s eyelashes at Sam, who looked disturbed. “Oh, honey, I knew you’d remember me. And who the hell takes the advice of a witch and the Book of the Damned instead of just doing what Cain did and transferring the Mark to something else? Hell, if you’d bothered to look me up I could’ve done it for you. Scribble it on a mildly annoyed slug, or a belligerent prawn. Boom, immortal slug, nobody cares, occasionally it licks something to death, the world totters onwards.”

“Cas,” said Sam, looking directly at Lucifer. “Can we do that now, d’you think? Trap her again?”

Castiel tried to open his mouth, but the muscles weren’t his.

“We don’t have the juice,” said Lucifer, so disdainfully that there would be no mistaking him for Castiel. “If it had still been on _his_ arm, if it were just moving it from one mortal creation to another—nothing to it. Binding her to that form again now she’s out? That’s God’s work.”

Sam cleared his throat, looked back and forth between the two archangels with sorely tried impatience, then looked pointedly at the empty box on the table.

“Huh,” said Gabriel.

 

***

 

“So,” said Jody, when Gabriel had snapped himself away and Sam had stomped off outside, “you’re the one who put those finger bruises on my girl’s neck.”

Lucifer blinked at her with cool, puzzled amusement.

“You wear a star as a badge,” he said. “Once it was made of tin. It symbolised power in your petty squabbles as you took over this land from the petty squabbles of others of your species, and you wave it at two of the four oldest beings in creation and scold us as if we were your schoolchildren by its power.”

“The first thing each schoolchild is taught, and the last thing they learn,” said Jody, “is that they’re worth no more and no less than every other schoolchild. Hell, a lot of people never learn it. It’s the only lesson. And human or not, people don’t torment people for their own amusement. You’re treading on thin ice here, Lucifer.”

Lucifer smiled, slow. The room crackled, almost beyond the edge of hearing.

“So are you,” said the devil.

The windows frosted over, flowers and silver filigree. White velvet tendrils raced over the walls and snaked underfoot, and the frost cracked in crazy patterns over Jody’s clothes, and Castiel’s— _Lucifer’s_ skin.

Jody was scared, Castiel felt. She had been already, scared to her bones, but her gaze didn’t waver and her voice didn’t rise.

“You know I can’t threaten you. I don’t know what you are or where you came from, only the stories we tell. You’re older than us, I guess; but first right’s not the only right. We’ve got some claim to this world too, by now; and I think you’re canny enough to know the value of having us on your side in defending it.” Her mouth twitched wryly. “Winchesters not the least.”

Lucifer’s eye ran up and down her, and his attention slid inside her like a scalpel.

“You’re the one who’s fucking him,” he said, with delicate distaste. “What is it about the Winchesters that draws people in like flies to dogshit?” And there, Castiel felt the whip of Lucifer’s disgust snap against himself as well.

Jody shrugged. “Their humanity,” she said, a little sadly. “We’re all human, but we never think about it. They’ve had to fight for it, and they do it on an impossible scale. You couldn’t make a home with them, but they remind us what we like to imagine humanity would be. That’s what heroes are for.”

Lucifer looked at her for a long moment. Then he nodded.

“Take the chillis,” he said. “They’ll grow well.” And he spread his wings, and flew.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it isn't obvious from the formatting: this chapter is all Dean praying to Castiel.

_Tell this sonofabitch that riding my arse isn’t permission to use my freakin’_ car _. He can’t handle her and he keeps playing ‘Best of Queen’_. _He won’t_ listen _to me! Unless he’s got a snarky one-liner to come back with._

 

***

 

_He won’t let me speak, Cas. Fucking dick. Never realised how much I talk until I can’t. Only person I can talk to is him and half the time he doesn’t even reply._

 

***

 

 _This dick says I’m depressed and it’s getting_ him _down living in my head_. _Fuck him_.

 

***

 

 _Screw it. You get to hear all my awesome one-liners. Without context. Someone’s gotta take one for the team. Cas, it looks like this guy... ran into her knife. He ran into her knife_ ten times _. Ha!_

 

***

 

_I’m the only one allowed to pull Sammy’s pigtails._

_... Cas. He’s given Sam literal pigtails. And he’s pulling them. Make him stop._

 

***

 

_... Gabriel says he “fixed” it. Like, he rebalanced all the chemical whatevers in my brain. Like he’s just allowed to screw around with my body. Like it’s got shit to do with my body. I don’t know if he noticed but our lives kinda suck arse, so sure, I’m not cheery Cathy all the time, the hell does he get off. Like he cares if I’m not all bright and chipper. Can I gank him without killing me, Cas? Just, you know. For science._

 

***

 

_Dear Castiel who art being possessed by the ultimate reject from Heaven. This goddess looks like what Picasso would scribble if he had a breast fixation._

 

***

 

 _So, he finally decided to actually talk to me. Guess he got tired of me yelling at him. He says it’s not that I was_ depressed _, it’s that I_ had depression _, whatever the hell difference that is. Except it means that my brain’s chemicals—my body’s chemicals—were so screwed up that it was changing not just the way_ I _think and feel about things but even the way_ he _does, which. Shouldn’t work like that? Right? I mean, that’s not how we work, that’s like soul-level shit, it shouldn’t have anything to do with the body. Except, uh. Last couple of days, I’ve felt... so relaxed? I mean, not like weed relaxed, just... like I can actually stop and think about shit and it’s not about to tear me apart inside my head? I mean, I can even think about_ you _without getting all... uh, never mind. Just sayin’, it’s kinda weird. I guess it’s like he’s got me on some heaven-level weird shit._

 

***

 

 _Okay, how the hell did you convince the fucking_ devil _to let you take point on a regular basis and I can’t even take a piss without Gabriel’s hand on my dick? I thought he was supposed to be one of the good guys?_

 

***

 

_So, how’s life among the meatsuits of the world treating you?_

_I mean, I guess it’s different for you because you’re an angel. And, you know, you’re all zen about shit. You’ve got that whole patience-of-eons thing going on. Except when you haven’t had your coffee yet, or I’m trying to explain the plot of—uh. Not that that happened. Right. Uhm. I guess I was just wondering... because, you know. It’s kind of weird riding shotgun? Once all the obvious shit is over, once you’re not trying to grab the wheel all the time... you can just sort of... get used to looking out the window, you know? Not just the front window either. You can... y’know, watch the fields go by on the sides and not worry about what’s flying straight at you. Or... well, look out the back, and... think about what you went past?_

_Uhm._

_Yeah. So. How’s that shit going for you, Cas? ‘Cos I was thinking... you did say something about the relief. And that whole thing with the breaking down in tears... that’s not normal, buddy. Not for you. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not getting judgey. I just mean... usually you have that shit locked away. And I’m wondering... maybe you’re finding the time to look out the back window?_

_Hell, ignore me, I don’t know what I’m saying._

 

***

 

 _I really really wanna say ‘aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper’ to Gabriel right now, only he’s riding_ me _, and he’d probably turn me into a hobbit or something._

 

***

 

_Gabriel says hobbits were real. As in, there was this whole species of humans—of people?—in eastern Asia a few million years back who were hobbit-sized and quiet and did shepherding and even had the freakin’ hairy feet. Tell me he’s pulling my chain, Cas._

 

***

 

_Heh. You’ll never guess the trick Gabriel says he played on Jefferson back in the day. I mean, I’m gonna go ahead and assume he’s full of shit and it never happened, but whatever, it’s a good story._

 

_***_

 

_I never thought I’d say this, but... it is possible to eat too much candy. Who knew. Jesus Christ, he isn’t even letting it reach my stomach and still I feel sick._

 

***

 

_It’s like I don’t even know who I am anymore, Cas. And that should be freakin’ terrifying, except—hah, normally it’d mean I’d be freaking out about being under some influence or even possessed, but go figure._

_It’s not in a bad way. It’s just. Normally I’d think in this way or that way about this thing or that thing, and now I look at that thing and just think, huh, well, that’s a waste of energy. I_ remember _my thoughts wearing their gears down in those same old paths, over and over, and now it’s like... I can remember it but I can’t_ feel _it?_

 _Is this what it feels like to not have depression? Man, our brains are freaky. Or angels are. I mean, it_ is _Gabriel we’re talking here, so._

 

***

 

 _Weirdest thing. Me and Gabriel, we’ve been actually chatting the last few days. So okay, it mostly started out as squabbling—okay, it’s mostly still squabbling, but it isn’t really anymore, y’know? It’s just easier to bitch about some things than talk like you mean it. And there’s a lotta crap that we’ve both... done, had done to us, y’know. Lot of shit to be angry about. And when someone’s already in your head and knows what you’re feeling without you having to say—and when, y’know, me and him, we’ve always kinda_ got _each other—I dunno, it makes it all feel more like buddies grumbling over drinks than like sharing and caring with a dick with wings._

 _The weird thing? It kinda feels like... like it’s making_ him _feel better. Kinda get the impression there’s a bunch of this shit that he’s never told anybody before, or never said and_ meant _it, so he’s actually getting to work through it for the first time. Guess it’s a few thousand years since he shared space with a vessel who was actually still a person._

_He’s still a judgemental dick, though.Heh. I guess being judgemental’s kinda in his job description, huh?_

_Might have to start calling him “Gabe”. He hates that._

 

***

 

_Caaaas, man. I’ve had “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” stuck in my head for fifteen hours. And I can’t even sing it out loud. So guess what, you get to share the pain._

_“Iiiiii’m dreamin’.... of a whiiiiiiiite Christmas..... just like the ones I used to knooooow...”_

 

***

 

_Gabriel just made me not allergic to cats so he could cuddly this mangy tabby who adopted us in Sarajevo. Tell him I’m not a customisable package, would you?_

_... and don’t go getting any ideas about picking up pets for the bunker._

 

***

 

_Survival mode, man. Sammy used to talk about it, back in the day, before we were locked down into all crapshoot all the time. I mean, when there were days that actually felt normal. Before Hell and all that shit. He’d talk about how when things were bad you just put crap to one side and your brain would figure you’d deal with it when things were better. And sometimes dealing with it feels worse than when it happened._

_I guess we’ve been in survival mode for years. Sammy and me, and you._

_Time for the PTSD to kick in, huh? Now we’ve both got someone else calling the shots, so that counts as some messed-up kind of holiday? I don’t know._

_Just... some things. Some things I’ve done are screwed up, man. And okay, sure, I always knew that, just right now it’s not_ those _things I’m thinking about. I mean, the world-ending shit, and... I don’t know. Those things, they don’t seem so important. Or... they do, I mean, it’s just like the perspective’s shifted through a few degrees. Looking at them again, it doesn’t hurt in the same places that it did before, the places they’ve rubbed raw. But some of the things I’ve done and said to you and Sam—some of the things I’ve done to myself—I can look at them and say, yeah, that’s messed up._

_Only the weird shit is, I don’t hate myself for it. It makes me think... I don’t know, that I want to do better?_

_I wanna see you again, Cas._

_There. I said it._

_Heh. I don’t even know if you’re hearing this._

 

***

 

_Gabriel flirting with Sam while he’s wearing me is either creepy or hilarious. Not sure which._

_No, wait, that look Sam just gave him? Definitely hilarious._

 

***

 

_Okay, so, Cas. You probably don’t give a shit, but._

_I’m bisexual._

_... oh, for fuck’s sake, Gabriel. Ever heard of privacy? Cas, he’s snapped up a freakin’ chorus line of cheerleaders to do high kicks in rainbow leggings and pom-poms and sing a number from Spamalot._

_I’m never getting this glitter out of my hair._

 

***

 

_Okay, this creep over here in Georgia definitely needs a dose of the good old Trickster magic._

 

***

 

 _Hey Cas. Do you think maybe Sam might be depressed too? I mean, if it is just a thing you can_ fix _like regular angel healing mojo, do you think...?_

 _Nah, forget it. Sam’s the most freakishly well-balanced person in the history of... of balancing things. I mean, the crap that bothers him, it’s all shit there’s a_ reason _for, you know?_

 

***

 

_Y’know what, Cas? I miss you too. I freakin’ miss you, man. I always have. Always do. And I never say it, do I?_

_When you’re around—you and Sammy—that’s the only time I feel like I can really rest._

 

***

 

_Heh. Tell Sammy Gabriel says I’d make a good Trickster._

_... on second thoughts, don’t tell Sammy. I wanna see his face._

 

***

 

_Heya, Cas._

_I don’t know if you’re hearing this. But._

_Just. Been rethinking a lot of shit. Going over thoughts and memories from years back._

_Gabriel seems to think you actually care about my opinion, for some reason. I mean like really care. I don’t know why what a screw-up like me thinks would make a difference to_ you _, but..._

 _I’ve given you a hell of a lot of crap, haven’t I? Never said a lot of things I should’ve said. Just kinda figured you understood it, like Sammy, only me and Sammy we’ve had years of knowing what ain’t said, and we mostly miss it anyway. And you... man, you don’t get half of what I_ do _say. Just._

_Any time I’ve given you crap or made you feel like hell, you know it was really me I was yelling at, right? I mean, it’s not like I—you’re worth so much more than—_

_Uh._

_Was talking to a preacherman a while back. Did confession and everything. Said to him... look, I’ve known for a while now there’s things I want to do differently. Ways of... talking. Feeling. People I..._

_Crap._

_I want you back in the bunker, okay Cas? I want a do-over on that time Gadreel made me kick you out. Can we try it again?_

_I think now I can think the things I couldn’t before, not without all the rest of my crap kicking in and short-circuiting the whole lot._

_I think I might be able to try, now._


	9. Chapter 9

Lucifer was impressionable, Castiel decided.

When he had first taken possession of Castiel’s body he had been all light sarcasm and eye-rolls and casual violence. He had moulded himself into the image of the ultimate demon, the lord of the damned, drawing on the habits of the demons of Crowley’s court a few thousand years of listening in on humanity’s impressions of what it meant to be _the devil_.

Under the influence of Castiel and the Winchesters, his voice had dropped lower, closer to Castiel’s own. He would listen, and think, and surprise Castiel sometimes with bursts of passionate opinion, of deeply felt conviction. And sometimes Castiel thought he felt the cadence of Sam’s sentences in his voice, a hint of Dean’s swagger in his walk.

The Lucifer that Castiel remembered from the days of the Apocalypse, all quiet intensity and purpose and very little to smile about—that, perhaps, had been Michael’s antagonist. He had been the Enemy of Mankind, great and terrible, as far above the pettiness of demons as he imagined himself to be above the fallibilities of man.

Sometimes, just sometimes, left to himself, Lucifer would sit quietly somewhere and... watch. Down in the heavy lightless depths of the ocean, microscopic where moss towered like redwood giants above them, floating high above a desert to see the currents of heat threading silvery through the air. It was only in those moments, thoselong, still hours, amidst the intricate whirlings of insects or anemones—that Castiel would begin to feel the edges of the millennia of pain in the depths of Lucifer’s being. It was only in that stillness, with no obligation to _do_ , that Lucifer could dare to let himself feel it.

And now...?

The planet of Castiel’s influence had run its course, and Gabriel’s was in the ascendant. Lucifer’s sense of humour, and his sense of cruelty, were following suit.

 

***

 

HE IS ALIVE, COME AND SEE, read the board outside a church.

Gabriel propped Dean’s boot against a wall, and crunched on a stick of celery.

“So, you think they keep him in a little menagerie cage in a side chapel?” Gabriel said.

Lucifer said nothing.

“Little signs.” Gabriel flicked two fingers in the air, as if to demonstrate. “‘Nickle a pop’.”

Lucifer looked sideways at him. A silence hovered expectantly in the air. Then:

“Two bucks to shake his hand,” said Lucifer, “and a side stall where you can buy those little pellets to feed him.”

Gabriel’s grin stretched out, wide and smug. “Ring toss game, where you’ve gotta try to get a communion wafer through the holes in his hands and feet.”

“Take home a shiny new Buddy Jesus doll if you win,” drawled Lucifer. “Why are we here, brother?”

“Oh, I’m just waiting to meet up with a friend,” said Gabriel innocently.

 _He isn’t_ , said Dean.

“And is this the kind of friend who’s going to help us work out how to trap the Darkness back in the Mark of Cain,” asked Lucifer, “or the kind that you drop into a nest of giant spiders because they like to pin insects to boards?”

“Hey, I have more than two kinds of friends. You forgot the butt-buddy kind.”

Lucifer wrinkled his nose delicately. “If only you’d let me.”

Gabriel elbowed him in the ribs. “Shut up, there he is.”

On the other side of the road, people were emerging from the church in ones and twos and small groups. A tall man with an enormous feathered hat and a sharp, smug soul paused on the steps, and looked up with self-important expectation at the cross above the door.

 _I see you, my son_ , boomed Gabriel’s voice in his head, _and well done. Your heckling during the sermon was On Point. Never again will that mealy-mouthed fool dare to preach another day without appropriate mention of the abomination that is the Kinder Surprise. The whole congregation admired your sound good sense and your charismatic wit, and also that deliciously colourful hat which you so obediently wore. Now, you must do something more for me. You must make a Channel of Youtube, and on it you will make a series of videos preaching my Word in the matters of the use of food dyes and the abhorring of house plants kept in any colour pot but red. And in these videos, mark you, you must be holding... a herring. Fear not that your message will go unheard: as Jonah in Nineveh will I send you forth, and ensure that your channel gets all the hits. And all will see you, and wonder._

The man’s malicious arrogance swelled within him, and he shouted—taking care to be heard—“I hear your word, Lord! Thank you! I will obey you! I am blessed to hear your voice! Hey, get that walking frame out of my way, I’ve got work to do from the Lord.”

Passers-by and other members of the congregation looked at him sideways, and rolled their eyes, or edged away, or swapped snide comments with friends. Just inside the church door the pastor was whispering to some of the older church-goers.

“And this is how you pass your time amongst Father’s creations, is it?” asked Lucifer.

“Hmm, let me see,” said Gabriel, with mocking gravity. “Self-important prick who spends his time using Dad’s name to advocate hate and make people’s lives hell, pretending he knows exactly what Dad thinks—along comes _moi_ and just confirms for him that he is Special and Chosen and gives him important assignments like riding a bike through a shopping mall wearing yellow stockings and shouting that the zombies are coming, or counter-protesting his old Westboro Baptist mates on the grounds that they’re wearing shoes with the wrong number of eyelets? Yep. Sounds good to me.”

 _That bit was my idea_ , thought Dean smugly to Castiel.

Castiel leaned in to the familiar touch of his prayer and wished heartily to see just one expression on his familiar features, one turn of his voice, that felt like _Dean_ and not like Gabriel. There were so many things he wanted to say to Dean—so many new ideas and strange reflections that Dean’s prayers had begun to stir in him—but unlike Dean, he had nobody to speak them to.

He made one attempt to take charge of his voice, but Lucifer brushed him aside. An old, tired resentment stirred inside him, directed against Gabriel; and it was becoming harder to know which feelings originated with Lucifer and which with Castiel, but surely the certainty of betrayal, the longing to be proved right and to be proved wrong at once, could not be Castiel’s own.

“Father developed opinions about shoes after I left, did he?”

“Might’ve,” said Gabriel. “Who gives a shit. Not like he’d tell us.”

“This is the kind of human you choose to surround yourself with. And you still advocate their survival as a race?” _What is it?_ he added, as Castiel prodded at him again.

 _I want to talk to Dean_. _It’s important._

_Not now, Castiel. We’re busy._

It was a simple firm dismissal—the grown-ups are talking—and Castiel was at a loss for words for a moment.

Gabriel shrugged. “I’m sentimental.”

Lucifer rolled his eyes. “Little brother. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t we agree that we’re on something of a tight schedule here? Have you given up, or are you just slacking off?” _I can feel you sulking in there. What is it you want to say to him?_

 _I..._ Castiel fumbled. It wasn’t the words that mattered, it was the connection. He needed to _see_ Dean and be seen by him: to share a look or a touch, and to say with that one simple moment, I am here. I am listening.

I know you.

“Who said I’m not working,” Gabriel back, with a wink. “Important secret angel business. And this town has the best strip club in three counties.”

 _Tell him,_ Castiel replied after a moment, _tell him Gabriel wasn’t lying about the hobbits_.

“‘Important’,” Lucifer echoed, mocking them both with that one slow drawl. And within him and within Castiel, the cold angry resignation set in: the inevitability of being let down by his brothers, of not being believed. “So the devil really does have to find the work for all these idle hands, or nothing’s going to get done. Winchester, Castiel says my brother wasn’t lying about the hobbits. Gabriel, if you’re done showing off your little pastimes I’ll be on my way.”

“Aw, Deano’s gone all blushy,” crooned Gabriel. “Hold your horses, o dark and impatient one. I’ve got a lead on somebody else who might be able to help us.”

 

***

 

Czernobog was in Rome, sitting on the edge of a fountain in the Piazza di Spagna.

“If anybody would know about containing two beings in one body,” Gabriel had said, “he’d be your guy.”

Perhaps he did; but he wouldn’t share. He only laughed, and stubbed out his cigar, and said that if he’d know who was coming visiting he’d’ve waited at the Colosseum instead, seeing as how it was probably more suited to his guest’s tastes. And then he’d talked about tobacco for twenty minutes without pause.

The most he could be persuaded to say to the purpose was, “Look, mate, you’re going about it all wrong. You can’t have two beings in one form at once, only one after the other. If you’re more than one thing you’re everything, and then you’re nothing.” And when Lucifer waxed sarcastic, Czernobog only grinned.

Gabriel had kept any contacts who needed delicate handling for himself. Castiel privately doubted if Gabriel could match even Lucifer’s dubious levels of ‘delicacy’, but at least Gabriel was more personable about it.

They passed a woman crouching near the base of a wall, wearing clothes that had not been washed in many days. She looked up at them as they passed—“Di carità, signore, please sir, merci”. Every language was slurred and stilted, syllables learned and repeated without meaning or hope.

Lucifer stopped to look down at her as if she were a mild curiosity. Then he put a folded bunch of fifty-Euro notes in her hand. A few moments ago the money had been in the purse of a rich tourist nearby, who had refused to tip the last four waiters because he considered them either degenerates or slackers.

“You lost your son in the journey,” he said to her, in her native Tosk. “He will cross the Ponte Sant’Angelo at 10:34 tomorrow morning.”

The woman clasped at their hand, blessing them, disbelieving and a little afraid. Lucifer hesitated over the touch; then he healed her stomach ulcers, and her throat cancer, and her dehydration and her sunburn and the old injury in her knee and the blisters on her feet.

“What have you done to me?” she whispered, clinging to his hand.

_Touch her soul, Lucifer. Look at her soul. That is hope._

“I have only given you what you needed for today,” said Lucifer. “It cost me nothing.”

“An angel,” she said, looking up at him with something like awe and something like gentleness. “An angel you are, sir.”

“No,” said Lucifer. “That’s my brother.”

He turned and walked down the Via Condotti, past all the shops—stopped to consider some windows, and to make some sardonic remarks about Castiel’s fashion sense—but unerringly, straight toward the river. There he stopped to stare up, hands in pockets, at the Castel Sant’Angelo: at the lofty figure of the angel at the pinnacle, with his sword poised to smite the Enemy.

“Quite the career he’s made,” said Lucifer, “of striking me down.”

He was still for a moment, amid the shouts and bustle of the crowd.

 _Perhaps we could try—_ began Castiel; but then he stopped.

The stone battlements around the highest courtyard began to groan and crack. They writhed, and slithered, and joined up into one vast long stone snake, which coiled and lifted its head and hissed, and looked up at the angel.

 _Stop_ , said Castiel. Lucifer would not hear him.

Masonry cracked and shattered and tumbled down the centuries of strata in the walls. As the screams of the tourists in the upper courtyards drifted across the Tiber, the vast stone creature slid quick and deadly up and around the bronze angel and threw its coils around him. Once, twice, three times, and it tightened and the angel cracked. Head and sword fell to the stone flags with a clatter, and the stone snake froze into immobility with the broken body still held in its coils, as if it had been carved so five hundred years before.

Lucifer smirked.

“Y’know, it occurs to me, little brother, that we’ve wasted enough time rolling in the hay with Gabriel’s old ‘associates’. Time for yours truly to take matters into my own hands.”

_Who do you mean?_

Lucifer stood still, hands in pockets still, amongst the chaos and the screams and the frantic voices of people speaking into their phones and recording videos in many languages. He fixed his eyes on one of the upper courtyards of the Castello, on three dead or dying bodies and the bloodied broken masonry that lay between them; and he smiled.

“Because I could not stop for Him,” said the first archangel, “let’s make Him stop for me.”

 

***

 

Lucifer had millennia of brooding on a single wrong and a single purpose behind him, and that was not to be lightly shaken off. It could only be transferred.

Lucifer’s thoughts ran on nothing but _Gabriel_. And their motion followed the same worn old furrows that Lucifer had been treading deeper and deeper since the Fall.

They were the only two archangels left, after all. Who else was there, in all the world?


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: panic attack, gore, murder, vomiting. Fun times for all!

Self-delusion is like fine sand.

It lies over the bedrock, loose and silver, and it can be shaped and formed and swept into the most deliciously delicate patterns.

But under a steady cold wind, or a sudden hard blow, it scatters; and the ugly black rock is exposed.

 

***

 

A place of great slaughter, at midnight.

Lucifer was a creature of habit. The Carthage cemetery looked much as Castiel remembered it; but a little more decrepit, now that it belonged to a ghost town. The only new thing was the tall white monument on the site of the 2009 massacre—on the site of Death’s last rising. An empty rectangular pool, in front of a small gated sepulchre and a spire. It looked ghostly and slender in the moonlight.

In front of it were gathered seven-times-seven people from the nearest village, shivering and naked and terrified, penned between three-times-nine demons.

And Castiel was powerless to prevent their slaughter. Lucifer had locked him down, voiceless and powerless, and would hear nothing he had to say.

He could feel the exultation rise with every step that Lucifer took toward them as if the feeling was his own, and his stomach was twisting with slow sick dread. His mind was skittish, leaping from thought to thought as it had used to do in Purgatory, after the shadow of Lucifer and the weight of his sins had broken him with no real Lucifer-brother to hold him together. _I am sorry, Balthazar_ , he thought wildly, _I promised you_ —

Lucifer stepped down onto the pristine white marble floor of the pool.

How did it work, the sharing of emotion? No just grace—they shared a body—Dean’s depression affected not only his thoughts but Gabriel’s—human emotions, shaped by body as much as by soul, by cultural preconceptions about pre-existing categories into which to fit every emotional event, by having learned how to feel about their feelings—Lucifer’s grace and Castiel’s, entangled, but _Castiel’s stomach was twisting and revolting and his skin was crawling trying to creep back from the fingerbones reaching out for the first struggling victim_ and no matter how strictly Lucifer had segregated their minds how could he not—the bile, the horror—

Castiel pleaded into nothingness as the woman sobbed out her last scream, then gurgled her life out over Castiel’s hands.

_Will all great Neptune’s oceans—wash the blood—no, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine—_

The body fell at their feet. Thick blood spread over the white marble.

 _Making the green one red_.

And the power and feelings surged within them, as the soul fled.

The same sins again, the same arrogant naïveté.

Lucifer turned to the next victim. A young man. Corn rows. Ear pierced with gold. A scar across his shoulder and blank terror in his eyes. A prayer on his lips.

... a gash opening his throat.

Once, Lucifer had learned feeling from Castiel. Once they had shared. Now Lucifer felt, and Castiel was swept along. Castiel had rested. He had given in to the promise of respite, leaning on his older brother’s strength, and he had given himself up. Once half of a whole. Less than half, less than anything. The phantom twin absorbed by its brother in the womb.

_Out, out, damned spot, brief candle._

The boy defecated as he died. Lucifer recoiled.

The flare of power came at the same time as the flash of impressions: the boy’s feelings, the boy’s life and soul. Everything that he had been, crammed all into a moment. Everything that he was while he clawed at his open throat and gasped for breath that he couldn’t drag in.

How often had Castiel even spoken to Lucifer lately? Hardly at all. How often had he thought, or even observed? He had only drifted, only seen. He had planted the idea of rescuing Gabriel, and what had he done since? Sat back and believed that Lucifer was tamed?

Castiel had always given himself up. To Heaven. To Naomi. To Leviathan. To Metatron. And every time, every time he made the same mistake.

He believed that he was stronger than he was. And he trusted where he shouldn’t.

... to Dean?

Arrogance.

Loneliness.

Castiel had lost himself.

Castiel had doomed the world and thrown himself and Dean away to no end. Sam was right, and Sam was justly angry.

If he had ever meant anything to Lucifer, Lucifer would not have blocked him out so thoroughly now. He would have been given a chance to fight.

He was sinking again into that black lake, dragging water into his lungs as the third victim tried to drag in air and found only blood, and this time Lucifer was not there to steady him. But Castiel couldn’t succumb. People were dying, at his hand, and there was nobody to stop Lucifer but himself.

His hands were shaking. Lucifer’s hands were shaking.

He had to _feel_ , and hope that Lucifer felt. He had to be a conduit for their terror, their pain, their lives, and hope that there was enough in Lucifer that could hear him.

He was expendable. He had believed he had spent himself well. But he was Lucifer’s pet, not his leader. Lucifer had never been leashed.

The fourth cried out “Dad, help me!” The shock of it, the wildness in his fight, almost made Lucifer flinch away. Lucifer was struggling. Lucifer was shaken. Castiel was sinking, seeing white walls and a fine silver drill aimed for his retina, but he was fighting.

And just for a moment he thought he felt another hand there supporting him, not Lucifer’s. One both more and less familiar... but as soon as he tried to look straight at it there was nothing there.

 _Gabriel_ , he prayed in despair, _Gabriel, help me. Gabriel, you must stop him._

The humans standing, waiting for their turn, huddled together in the moonlight. The vomiting and the shitting, the prayers and the pallor, the stillness, the fainting, the clinging to each other, the stink of them and of the blood.

 _Lucifer_ , Castiel prayed, knowing that he would not be heard, _you were made for love first_.

Five: she was barely sixteen. She had died her hair pink yesterday, because she thought it would look cute for her friend’s party on the weekend. She tried to cling to the girl beside her, who was her worst enemy at school and who clung to her just as desperately.

She took almost a minute to die, and Lucifer fixed his eyes on the moon instead of on her as the strength of her soul and life flooded into him and her hand clutched at his calf.

Their heart was thudding far too fast, and their clothes were sticky and black.

Six.

Seven—and the fall of this body dragged down with it. He fell, heavy and solid, to one knee in the bloody pool.

The demons looked at each other.

Lucifer lifted his head.

“That will do,” he said. “There has been enough death in this place. Let the others go.”

One demon tried to argue. Lucifer snarled, sudden and vicious, and an iron cross tore itself from a headstone and flung across the graves to pin the demon to a tree.

The humans fled.

Lucifer dragged himself to his feet.

“I am the devil,” he said.

Castiel knew what it was to feel the weight of a human body after months of inhabiting it with the infinite strength of an angel, to feel it suddenly belonging to you, dragging you to the earth, bleeding energy with every step and every breath. This body felt like that now; only heavier, and shaking at the same time.

“Repeat after me,” purred Lucifer with a ghastly smile. “We offer up out lives, blood, souls... to complete this tribute.”

The demons looked at each other. Cowed, not awed: not devoted, not this time.

Lucifer’s desperation and his fury rose. He raised a fist and clenched it; and every mouth, every tongue, every pair of lungs in a demon’s vessel was forced to squeeze out the words. Then they flashed gold, and fell dead.

As the last one fell, Lucifer staggered to the side of the pool and threw up.

He was heaving, and shaking, gasping desperately for breath he didn’t need; and the bile was filthy and _human_ in their mouth.

He scrubbed at his mouth with his hands, with his sleeve, with the dew-damp grass. Then he snapped up a glass of water and drank, and spat, and drank and spat again. It didn’t wash away the taste.

“You know,” said a voice behind them, “you didn’t have to go to all this trouble for me.”

It wasn’t the voice Lucifer had been expecting. For one thing, it was female.


	11. Chapter 11

“You’ve changed,” said Lucifer harshly.

His chest was heaving and his hands were clenching on a sword that he didn’t have. There was a wildness inside him that Castiel had never felt before, that Lucifer had no idea how to ride.

“The Winchesters killed the old Death. Surprised?” Billie shrugged. “I got bumped up the chain. It’s impossible for Death not to exist, after all. Something’s got to fill the gap. You should know that, angel. After all, if you didn’t exist humans would have created you. Who’s to say they didn’t?”

“I was created by my Father,” snapped Lucifer—shaken, and badly enough to let her calm contempt take the reins of the conversation. “Why are you here before the ritual is complete?”

“You are a part of your father,” she corrected him, “one of the little splinters scattered when the tree split in two. Your consciousness is too tiny to comprehend it, but Death was there before you knew there was a _you_ to think. What are you calling me for?”

“I will bind you,” he replied, “and you will Reap the sister of God.”

“Will I?” she said, and smiled. “Have you? You angels, and your pets. One day, one day very soon, I will bring an end to your meddling in the order of the universe.”

“If a pair of warboy hunters could empty your boss’s shoes for you,” said Lucifer, smooth as jagged ice, “imagine what I could do to you, sweet mouse.”

“The Darkness cannot be killed any more than the Light,” she said dismissively. “It is one half of that split tree, one half of the force of creation. Like your father, it only took on consciousness when it split from him, and he became a god, and he locked her away. He has almost lost his since, over the years: being too many things to too many people. Your memories from before that moment are only the traces of that eternal unconsciousness. You share them all with your brothers; and with your father, and with her.”

“You lie,” said Lucifer; “and if you didn’t, she has a consciousness now. Anything that thinks _I am_ can be unmade.”

Lucifer was hardly hearing, hardly able to hear; but Castiel inside him, Castiel was listening. And at the same time he was hearing the words of Ganesh, in his memory—words Gabriel had given to his shade, or that Gabriel remembered hearing him say, or that had risen from some strange connection Gabriel had made between the illusion of him and the remains of him still left in the world. Not a god: a creator. _The_ Creator, perhaps; but a god is worshipped, a god knows who and what it is. And every other god, it has a life, and an origin story—it exists _within_ creation.

Too many things, to too many people. Losing himself.

“It is impossible,” said Billie. “ _You_ are incidental, you angels; but he and she must both exist, to balance each other out. A world where is is always day is just as barren as one where it is always night. I am Death: I know that life springs from the touch between order and chaos.”

The page of a book floated in front of Castiel’s eyes, something he had read while researching with Sam two years ago. It had stuck in his memory, because it had seemed strange to him. He had thought it must be a metaphor, or an explanation for human beliefs about gods rather than about gods’ nature, but... _Gods may come from anywhere. Anything may become a god. A greyhound, a river, a wood nymph, a man, a monster, an angel. It does not matter where it has its origin once it begins to accumulate belief._

Mercury had begun as an angel, so he said, and had become a god. So had Gabriel, by a different path. What if... what if a part of the force of _life_ that lay behind everything - Creator and not God - what if it became not _the_ god, but _a_ god?

He had only become Himself in being split. And by becoming _omni_ to everybody, by taking on every form in every belief that partook of some idea of the creator spirit, he had lost himself again. He had become... more than consciousness. Suffused through every breath and being in the world.

It was a theory. Castiel was not sure he believed it. But what it would mean was— _he has not abandoned us_. All that long, fruitless search for what was already all around him—

“Do you think I care about the _world_?” Lucifer demanded, reckless and unstoppable, with tears and fury in his voice and bile in his throat. “My father threw us all away. I will gather that which is best to myself and keep it safe—I will recreate the best of his work and make my own—I will be the Morning Star, if there is no sun. If you will not do my bidding freely, little Death, I will bind you and you will do it on compulsion.”

_Lucifer, you love this world. You love every detail of creation. This is not what you want, brother._

Lucifer turned his back on the slim, exasperated figure and drew the latent threads of power into himself: the place of death, the souls laid down, the demons’ unwilling sacrifice, the strength of his own grace and the sigils laid in preparation. He wove them together, and charged them, and the power of it surged through him, and...

And it was _wrong_. The sensation of power was there, but only the sensation. And it was familiar, too.

Castiel had felt this in the carousel.

Lucifer laid the web of power in place, completing the ritual, and turned back to Billie. She was unchained.

She shrugged, and stepped back. Holy fire sprang up around the lip of the pool. The blood and bodies vanished.

“You really should have listened to her,” said Sam Winchester, with regret.

He was standing in the door of the mausoleum; and he was holding the sheathed Sword of Judith.


	12. Chapter 12

Sam stepped down from the door of the mausoleum. He came right to the edge of the pool and stood there, toes almost touching the flames, looking into Lucifer’s eyes. And Lucifer was silent.

“I do know you kinda well by now,” said Sam, with that little smile that was somehow stern and apologetic at the same time. “Knew the way things were going this would be your next move, though I admit I hoped it wouldn’t. But when I spoke to Gabriel, he said—he looked around here and he could _feel_ it, the sort of ripples of future catastrophe here. So—”

“Gabriel,” Lucifer said, and the word choked in his throat.

“There were no real humans left in the town where you went for your victims,” said Sam. “Jody and the sheriff there, they got them out three days ago. The ones you found were all Gabriel’s illusions.”

 _Sorry, kid_ , whispered Gabriel in Castiel’s mind. _Winchesters one and two insisted I tip you off—but you and he, you’re too nearly one thing. He would’ve noticed your relief._

“But I felt—” began Lucifer, and cut himself off. He had felt the power, had felt the souls leave their bodies, had seen the lives that he extinguished, just as Castiel had done—and no doubt, just like Castiel, he remembered how persuasively Gabriel had deceived all their senses in Heaven.

“You felt what I felt, brother,” said Dean’s voice in Gabriel’s tones; and he sat down beside Sam, on the little wall of plaques with the names of the dead. “All those faces, all those people and lives—they’re people I’ve killed. This century, or twenty centuries ago. I remember them all.” He shrugged. “There’s plenty more than seven times seven to choose from.”

“Let me out,” said Lucifer, cold and broken. “Let me out, and we will fight, Gabriel.” But even as he said it he was drawn toward Gabriel, towards the mess of _feeling_ under the cool exterior. Lucifer was starved of it; and the barrier keeping him from Castiel was breaking down.

“Not gonna fight you, bro,” said Gabriel, with a wry twitch of his mouth. “Hey, you’d be lost if you killed me. Who’d you have to strive against, huh? You need an opposite, and a brother. You need me, kid.”

“Kid,” said Lucifer blankly. “I—I am your _older_ brother, Gabriel, and you are nothing beside me. How dare—”

“Nah,” Gabriel said. “Didn’t Death here give you the talk? Turns out nobody’s older than nobody. And it’s not even an Odysseus joke. Turns out, Dad never meant to leave. Ain’t that a turn-up for the books?”

“Look at you,” said Sam softly. “You’re not a weapon anymore. You’re not forged for a single purpose. You’re more than that. You get to choose.”

“This will be best,” said Lucifer, almost a plea, “for all of us. Brother. I will take care of us. I will take our Father’s place, you must trust me. Why will you never trust me?”

“Concept,” said Gabriel. “You try trusting _me_. This Winchester moose over here came up with a different plan. One that doesn’t involve, you know, destroying Creation. Might just make it better. Even Death here’s on board. You don’t have to do everything yourself, kiddo. Pretty sure you’ve just proved you don’t want to go down this road again. And—I don’t want to lose you again, okay? C’mon—you with us?”

Lucifer just stared, wordless and shaking with sickness and fury and crippling pride. And underneath it all that furious, heartsick longing that Castiel was just beginning to think might be universal: to be seen.

To be known.

Castiel reached out, and touched him.

 _You promised me,_ he said, _you promised me that you would never let me make the same mistake, Lucifer._

“Mistake?” said Lucifer aloud. “What mistake, little bird?”

_This is too familiar, the blood on my hands. Trusting foolishly—believing myself stronger than I am. I said yes to you because I believed—in you, and in me. Please, don’t make me destroy it all again. Don’t forswear me._

The love rushed in on him, all of Lucifer’s fierce, desperate, angry love, and he staggered under the weight of it.

Lucifer _did_ care for him—he _did_ care what Castiel thought, what he felt. He had shut Castiel off because he could not bear to feel him.

Castiel gathered himself and reached back, nestling into Lucifer’s grace with awkward affection.

 _You know that Sam would not survive, if you took this step,_ Castiel pressed on. _Nor Claire; and without them, I would not be myself, Dean would be destroyed. And if we somehow saved them: what would they be without Jody, without Alex, and Jody without her job and the people she helps every day, and Alex without her school and her friends and everything that makes up her life? My family would be destroyed._ And he let Lucifer feel the truth of it: Castiel’s new family, chosen and built, how it extended beyond the people he loved to the people that _they_ depended on to be who they were. He let Lucifer feel how all these human lives entwined with all these others, how family didn’t end with blood: how it extended on into all the hundreds of parts of other people inside each person, and how so many deaths would be the end of them.

“Gabriel—” said Lucifer; and Gabriel rose, eyes sharp and dancing gold in the firelight, and he doused the flames.

“Hey Lucy, guess what?” he said. “You’re my brother, and I _forgive_ you.”

“What?”

 _He really does, the smug little shit,_ commented Dean fondly. _Just call me Dr. Phil._

“You can’t,” croaked Lucifer, staring.

“Fuck that,” said Gabriel. “It is in my gift, and only mine, to forgive what has been done to me.”

He held out his hand. Sam looked away.

 _Go on_ , whispered Castiel, and pushed forward ever so gently his own wonder, his envy, his humility, at this chance to have this much of his family again.

Lucifer took Gabriel’s hand, and almost fell to his knees again; but he had his pride.

Gabriel’s grace—always so carefully boarded away—flared bright and joyous as his grin. He took Castiel’s hand to Dean’s lips and kissed it, reverent and fierce; and Lucifer pressed into the touch, and took his face with perfect gentleness between his hands, and kissed his mouth.

Dean’s lips were dry, and soft, and full; and somewhere beyond the brightness of two archangels Castiel could feel the aching familiarity of Dean’s soul.

“Uh-uh,” murmured Gabriel, laughing. “Spoiler alert, Deano.” And he pressed his forehead against Lucifer’s, and held him.

 

***

 

“The gibbous moon,” said Sam, with a nod overhead. “Most people think the full moon’s more powerful, or the dark of the moon. But the full moon can only get darker, and the dark of the moon can only turn toward the light. For this, for what we want to do tonight, we want the gibbous moon. ‘Halfway between the light and the dark, where even the moon lives on the edge’.”

Castiel recognised that reference.

The archangels positioned themselves, and laid the lines of the magic that Sam had worked out. Gabriel cloaked himself from all sight, and Dean Winchester (to all appearances) stood there, and called out to Amara to save him from Lucifer.

And Sam unwrapped the hilt of the Sword of Judith, and offered it to Death.


	13. Chapter 13

“Put the Mark of Cain on a slug,” Gabriel had said, mostly joking. But Sam hadn’t taken it as a joke.

After all, who said the Mark’s bearer had to be human?

It was working out how to trap the Darkness back within the Mark that took time—or rather, how to twin her to its host. It was only after Sam had a definite plan, and had Billie in his corner, that he’d brought Gabriel on board.

It wasn’t the _power_ of God’s Hand that they used. It was the connection it offered to the source of that power. When Amara appeared, with innocent anger in her dark eyes, the archangels bound her in an instant. Billie stepped forward, wielding the Hand, and smote her therewith.

And they put the Mark on God.

 

***

 

The universe changed.


	14. Chapter 14

The blade bisected Amara from crown to feet, but it seemed to pass right through her like mist. The body fell, empty, apparently unharmed.

On the very edge of his senses, almost too vast even for him but fundamental, Castiel felt something shift in the balance of Creation. Something there that hadn’t been there before, an extra edge to each colour, an extra depth to every life; or perhaps, something gone that had been there for so long nobody could have said they knew about it.

And the source of his own grace... shifted.

He had never thought about it before. It had always come from Heaven, from that other plane where there was no such thing as physicality. Now it came from within, and from the living world around him; and it was only him, only _his_ , as much as any human soul belonged to itself.

All this he realised before the empty vessel of the Darkness crumpled to the white marble; and then his own body followed it. Because Lucifer, his attention was fixed (as ever) on the form of his opposite; and Castiel felt the rush of exaltation and victory from him, then the realisation of the sheer _power_ contained within that vessel, formed for herself from nothingness by the equal of God and subject to no human limits.

Lucifer left Castiel, all in a rush, and streamed into the empty body of what had once been Amara.

Having his own body back, being alone in his mind and thoughts, seeing nothing but what _he_ saw, taking command suddenly of his own limbs and balance—

Castiel fell.

The marble felt cold and welcoming and smooth against skin. There was wind rustling over him, and the sharp faint scent of vomit, and the sting of impact somewhere on his body though he couldn’t quite say where, and a blur of greys and whites in front of his eyes.

“Oh, go on then,” said Gabriel. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.” And suddenly Dean Winchester was there, rushing forward, warmth and fierceness surrounding Castiel, lifting him up, holding him firm, remapping the boundaries of Castiel’s own body with his hands and teaching him where it ended and began.

“Cas— _Cas_ , come on buddy, I got you, I—”

“She had to split,” mumbled Castiel, melting in against him, vaguely aware it was some reference to some scene from a TV show which also had a mausoleum and...

Dean’s laugh was joyous and almost wild. “Damn, I could kiss you.”

“Yes,” said Castiel, dizzy and heavy with the sudden weight of lifting his own limbs, “please.”

He felt the shock dash through Dean, felt the hands on his back and shoulder tighten, drawing him close. He heard the thud of Dean’s heart and the choking rush of fear, the sudden consciousness of being _seen_. One hand shifted to Castiel’s jaw, and curled so carefully around it—lifted the thumb, to touch his lower lip.

Castiel opened his eyes just in time to see green eyes (close, so close to him) brighten in determination. Then there was Dean’s mouth, soft and hot and as focussed as if this kiss was a case, a fight, with no way out but victory.

“ _Oh_ ,” breathed Castiel—that word again, that single unmeaning meaningful sound, beyond language, for what Dean did to him.

This, yes—this was _much_ better.

He found Dean’s hand, and curled his fingers around it. It was shaking; but when he touched it, it squeezed back.

“Shut up, Gabriel,” Dean muttered.

Somewhere beyond the hearing of any human but his vessel, Gabriel was singing a song from a Disney movie about a mermaid.

Castiel ignored him and nudged at Dean’s cheek with his nose, angled his mouth in again to catch the tail end of Dean’s words, and found how impossible it is to kiss properly when you’re smiling.

 _Sha-la-la-la-la-la, my oh my!_ warbled Gabriel smugly.

“I swear to God—” Dean growled at him.

 _God doesn’t exist anymore, baby_ , purred Gabriel. _Swear to me instead. Make it nice and crude._

“Uh, guys?”

Dean screwed his eyes shut, and huffed his frustration. “Really, Sammy?”

“Yep. You’re gonna want to...”

Castiel refocussed his attention.

Lucifer was gone. Death was leaning against the mausoleum, looking as unimpressed as she ever did. And Sam was standing there where Amara had fallen, looking awkward, holding a naked newborn baby gingerly in his arms.

“Um,” he said. “It didn’t seem right just to leave her on the marble. I don’t really know what—”

“Huh.”

It was Gabriel who spoke, and Gabriel who stood up, though his hand lingered in Castiel’s just for a moment.

“Would you look at that,” he said, sharp and smiling, and took the baby easily from Sam.

 _Wow_ , said Dean. _Cas, she’s..._

Gabriel laid the skinny, tiny body along Dean’s broad forearm, cupping the fragile head in his hand, and laid his other hand over her hiccuping belly.

“Well,” he said, “definitely human.” He traced a fingertip over the screwed-up eyes, the tiny nose, the gaping worried mouth, and curled it around the side of her head. “There’s something there, but... no power, nothing to get all uptight over.”

“So it’s basically just the baby that Amara possessed?” said Sam, hovering anxiously. “Just, the way she was before Amara possessed her?”

“Not quite,” mused Gabriel. “More like... so, the bits of Amara that were the Darkness went bye-bye, and the bits of her and the baby that had anything human in them went back to _this_ original shape, and the adult vessel she made for herself has scarpered with Lucifer...”

 _So this is something new_ , Dean prayed anxiously to both Gabriel and Castiel, _but she’s a person? Like, she’ll grow up, and she’s got a soul? ‘Cos, dude, I’m looking at her through archangel senses right now and she_ ** _feels_** _fucking cold and hungry and terrified and she needs a hug, okay?_

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Your brother’s a drama queen,” he informed Sam. Then he snapped up a baby blanket and swaddled the child in it with quick, knowing hands; and he tucked her into Castiel’s arms.

“Congrats, papa!” he said. “Now I’d better go check on the wayward daughter of my wayward dad. Have fun!”

“Mm,” said Billie. “I should go and make sure we didn’t break the world.”

And so Sam and Castiel were left alone in the cemetery, and there was a scared child beginning to fuss in Castiel’s arms.

“So,” said Sam.

“I’m sorry,” said Castiel at once. “I’m sorry, Sam. I should have remembered how you felt when you found Dean’s letter saying he was going to say yes to Michael—”

“Cas,” said Sam, almost laughing, “ _Castiel_. Just—shut up, yeah?”

Sam’s hug was much gentler than Dean’s—wary of the baby held between their bodies, not so desperate—but it was warm, and it was real. Castiel was stiff and uncomfortable for a moment; then he leaned in, over the squirming child, and rested his head just for a moment on Sam’s shoulder.

“So,” said Sam, into his hair, “what I was going to say is, you can fly us home now, right? ‘Cos Gabriel brought me here, and I left my car at Jody’s.”

Castiel laughed, and felt the air pull into his own lungs, and his own mouth and cheeks ache with the feeling.

“Yes, Sam. I can fly us home.”


	15. Chapter 15

Angels don’t sleep.

Castiel had experimented with it when he had been entirely graceless, cut off from any other senses and consciousness than those provided by his vessel. He had found it deeply disconcerting. Angels are not naturally equipped to deal with losing awareness of the world around them. They are, however, capable of dormancy: of guarding one gate for five thousand years without boredom or change, of remaining trapped in ice for millennia, of simply watching the quiet dance of hundreds of seasons through the world around them. Every sense, every thought, becomes less immediate: less urgent.

And so, grace and body reunited, Castiel had studied this strange ritual of all embodied, conscious things, and had developed a compromise that he enjoyed. He had discovered that he liked lying on his stomach best of all, with his hands tucked under the pillow. His body slept; the heartbeat and breathing slowed, REM was achieved, all the mental processes that involved the physical brain and body were suspended. With the rest of himself, he practiced meditative techniques that he had learned from a homeless woman in Perth, half detached from the vessel that anchored him to the physical plane. He remained more or less conscious of the world around him, but he did not engage with this consciousness. He did not think: he rested.

So Castiel felt it, as a distant familiar warmth, when Gabriel came, and touched him. He did not wake: there was no threat. He felt it when Gabriel left.

He was surprised, therefore, to wake up and find that he was not alone in Dean’s bed. The baby was still there, sleeping soundly in her improvised bed of blankets and cushions in a large deep serving dish, from the days when the bunker kitchen had had a dozen or more men to cater for. But there was another soul in the room, another presence. Dean was curled up against Castiel’s side, with his cheek on Castiel’s shoulder and his arm slung over his waist.

Castiel lay there, cocooned in warmth, and _felt_ it: the slow puffs of Dean’s breath over his skin, the rise and fall of Dean’s chest against his side, the faint steady pulse of heart and blood, the light curl of Dean’s hand over his other shoulder. The child was resting, filling the space with a soft pulse of contentment. The weight of the blankets, and of Dean’s arm over his back, and of Dean’s body draped along his side, anchored Castiel to the bed, without making him feel either crushed or trapped. Rather, the feeling it gave him said _you are home, you are safe, you are wanted._

Castiel wasn’t sure whether that was an illusion or not—whether it would be awkwardly and carefully dispelled when Dean woke—but he was beginning to hope. And in the meantime, he lay there with his cheek pressed into the pillow and Dean’s breath stirring the hair at the back of his neck, and basked in the peace of it.

When he felt Dean float toward consciousness, Castiel lay there still. He felt the sense of warm pleasure that came before awareness; then the confusion, the spike of adrenalin and arousal that came with realisation, and the sudden wary stillness of the body that lay against his.

Slowly, the tension drained away. Dean’s head lifted a little, furtive. Then he resettled, inching in just a morsel closer. One foot slipped tentatively over Castiel’s ankle, knee pressed into the back of knee, and the hand on Castiel’s shoulder was no longer resting there but holding it, deliberate and disbelieving.

Dean buried his face in the back of Castiel’s neck; and Castiel let himself breathe again.

“Hello Dean,” he murmured.

Dean froze. Then he poked Castiel’s shoulder.

“You little shit,” he muttered. “How long were you awake?”

“For some time,” Castiel said; and he shifted a little, just enough to press back into Dean’s touch.

Dean’s thumb brushed back and forth on his shoulder. “How’s the kid?” he asked; then, “Is, uh—this okay?”

“She’s fine, Dean.” Castiel wriggled his hand out from under the pillow, and laid it wordlessly over Dean’s until it relaxed, still and warm. “She wouldn’t stop crying, last night. It was rather distressing. But I found that she likes being sung to and how she likes best to be held. And I went and took some formula from a baby store.”

“You rebel,” murmured Dean, smiling against Castiel’s skin.

“I left money.”

They lapsed into silence, comfortable and hopeful. Castiel could feel the anticipation buzzing under both Dean’s skin and his own; but this time, there was no confusing the two. Not with Dean.

There had been times when he had come close to losing himself in Dean, to giving himself over and forgetting who he was, but that was behind him. If they were to cleave together now, it would not be an immersion of the self: it would be an affirmation of it.

At last: “Missed you,” said Dean gruffly.

Castiel’s heart seemed to skip a beat.

He turned over.

Dean’s eyes were wide and vulnerable, gleaming soft in the dark. Castiel reached up and touched Dean’s cheek with the tips of his fingers: traced over his cheekbone, the crinkles at the corner of his eyes, the line of his nose and the curl at the side of his mouth.

“I missed your face,” he confessed, and found his whisper breathless. “Gabriel uses it... very differently to the way you do. And your voice, your voice as well.”

Dean’s lips curved against his fingers. “Tell me about it.”

Castiel wanted very badly to taste those lips again.

“I,” he said, “Sam said to me last night—that is, I was concerned, because after you said _yes_ to Gabriel he didn’t pray to me for some weeks. I heard nothing from him until last night. I thought that he was angry with me. And he was, of course, but not... he said he was only angry with me as he was with _you_. He said that I mistake anger for rejection. He said there is nothing I could do that would make him think less of me, make him think that I am not family. There is nothing I could do that couldn’t be forgiven.”

“ _Cas_ ,” said Dean, helplessly; then he dropped his eyes, and rested his cheek in Castiel’s touch. “Yeah, he always was better at that sort of crap than I was.”

“I called him brother,” said Castiel, wonderingly. “And he looked at me as if—Dean, did you know that he still believes himself unworthy of my esteem? _Mine_?”

“You—” said Dean, staring at him. “You, who—fuck it, _Cas_ , you dumbarse—”

He kissed Castiel’s hand, with his eyes screwed shut and all his suppressed feeling in the touch, and Castiel couldn’t breathe. Then he pressed his own hand over Castiel’s, and turned his face to Castiel, and touched their noses together.

“Is this,” said Dean, and his hand settled on Castiel’s chest, fingers brushing his collarbone. “Is this... okay?”

“Dean,” said Castiel, and slid his hand down to curve around the side of Dean’s neck, possessive and clear. “ _Anything_ , Dean.”

It was at that moment, of course, that the baby woke up, and started to cry.

Dean’s eyes went wide. Then he dropped his forehead to Castiel’s shoulder, and laughed helplessly.

“So, I guess we’re parents now, bud.”

“Yes,” said Castiel, holding him close for just a moment. “I suppose we are.”

The baby was wet; and, as Castiel had been too flustered the previous night to collect diapers as well as formula, this meant wiping her down carefully and changing her swaddling. He placed her on Dean’s chest while he fetched another shirt to wrap her in, and watched the careful curve of Dean’s large hands around her skinny hips, over her shoulders and cradling the back of her head.

“Hey,” murmured Dean, a low gentle rumble in the dark, head bent low over the tiny fretting person sprawled against his chest. “Hey, now. What’s all the fuss over, sweetheart? I gotcha. We’re right here. Not goin’ anywhere. Just you hold on, hmm?”

Castiel’s heart swelled with tenderness.

“She _feels_ human,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Dean. “I felt her when... it’s nothing like it was with Amara. That was all tangled and messed up. But she still feels like _mine_ , y’know? She’s mine to take care of. Or. Well.” He glanced up, half shyly, and down again at once. “Ours.”

“Yes,” said Castiel; and awkwardly worked out how to swaddle a baby while she isn’t lying down.

It was only once it was done that he saw the bed properly. He cleared his throat, blinked, and nodded at it.

Gabriel had left them both covered in rose petals.

“Dear Gabriel, who art definitely not in Heaven,” said Dean, “fuck you.”

A breeze from nowhere scattered the petals across the rumpled bed. They resettled, forming the words: _sure, you guys owe me a threesome._

“Well,” said Castiel, resignedly, “I’m glad he’s not dead.”

Little pale fists flailed their way out of the awkward swaddling and pattered against Dean’s collar bone. He began to sing “Hey, Jude”.


	16. Chapter 16

“Banana pancakes?” said Castiel, puzzled.

Dean’s grin blossomed into a beam of delight.

“Prepare for an awesome breakfast.”

 

***

 

“Just slide it in under—no, you gotta angle it a bit further down. That’s better. And jiggle it around a bit, but gently…”

The pancakes _did_ smell delicious. In theory Dean was preparing a bowl of berries tossed with castor sugar and cream to go on them, but in practice he was hovering as close as he could behind Castiel, almost nuzzling his neck, bouncing the baby with one arm and guiding Castiel’s hand with the other. Castiel felt that he could be forgiven for exaggerating his incompetence with the spatula just a little.

“We gotta go back to the baby store today,” Dean commented, dropping a kiss (soft but heavy with meaning) just under Castiel’s ear, and resting his chin on Castiel’s shoulder. “Blankets, bibs, onesies, a shitload of diapers—hah, literally—and wipes and diaper cream, more bottles and teats, a crib, a baby monitor, mobiles and a little stereo for her room so we can play her soothing music, all the medical shit—“

“Those won’t fit in your daddy’s bedside chest of drawers,” Castiel said over his shoulder, in the general direction of the burbling noises.

Dean scratched the back of his neck, looking embarrassed. “And, uh… we’re gonna need a bigger bed.”

Castiel frowned. “I don’t think it would fit in your room. Especially not with a crib, and another cupboard.”

“ _Our_ room,” said Dean. “There’s … other bedrooms. Next level down. Bigger, some of them—ensuites shared between two rooms—bigger beds, like they were set up for married couples. I was thinking we could… move? And she could have the connected room. Y’know, once she’s big enough that we don’t have her right beside our bed. If you were okay with that.”

Castiel looked around at him. “You love your room.”

“Well, yeah, but…” Dean trailed off, and gave Castiel a look like there was something very obvious that he was meant to understand from that incomplete sentence.

Castiel touched his arm. “You should keep your room,” he said. “For when you need it. I mean, for when you want to be alone.”

“That pancake’s just about burned,” said Sam from the door, grinning hugely.

Dean jerked his face and hand away from Castiel, but his body kept where it was—curved around Castiel and the baby, protective and possessive.

“Dude. Neck, bell.”

“He’s been there for five and a half minutes,” said Castiel, smirking a little. “My apologies—I thought you knew.”

“Like hell you did,” said Dean, and was promptly folded in one of Sam’s warmest and most careful hugs.

He grumbled a little, though with no particular force to it; and when Sam at last let him go he rolled his eyes, and was immediately punched in the shoulder.

“Ow,” Dean complained.

“That’s for saying yes,” said Sam. “Dumbarse.”

“Hey,” said Dean. “No swearing in front of my daughter.” He tried to sound casual about it, but there was no hiding the quiet wonder in the last few words.

“Here,” said Sam, taking her. “You get breakfast. And I’m happy for you. Jerk.”

Castiel smiled at his frying pan of pancakes, while the brothers Winchester stared meaningfully at each other behind him.

“Whatever,” said Dean after a moment, and moved away to find the maple syrup; but Castiel could feel the happiness glowing inside him.

“Hey Cas.” Sam settled against the counter beside him, tickling the baby with a goofy smile. “Can you zap me over to Jody’s in a couple of hours? Alex’s got a game tonight that I promised I’d be at if, you know, the world didn’t end.”

“Of course, Sam.”

“You guys should come to dinner. Jody’d love to see you. And this little girl. Um. So, hey. Dean. Gabriel stopped by last night. Were you... y’know, awake for that?”

Sam’s tone was too casual to be casual, too wary to be anything but careful; and Castiel felt Dean’s sudden protectiveness flare.

“Went to sleep in Madagascar,” he replied shortly, “woke up in my bed, alone. Well. Without Gabriel. What’d he say?”

“Made me an offer,” said Sam, tickling the baby’s belly with a concentration not merited by the task. “Said he made the same to you, and you took it.”

“Yeah,” said Dean gruffly. “Made solid sense.”

“Huh,” said Sam. “Okay. So.”

He lapsed into silence for a moment, and Castiel took the opportunity to ask, “What offer?”—although at the same time he was reaching out toward Dean with certain other senses, feeling out certain differences that he had barely noticed before.

“Uh.” Dean shrugged, embarrassed. “All-round max archangel blessing. Protection, first up. A whole bunch of imperviousness shit, and good luck charms, and the warding off of malicious supernatural sight of all kinds. Powerful things he’s been using for centuries on himself and knows works. And a complete overhaul of the chassis—healing not just what’s hurting right now but fixing damage done in the past. Like, reverting the body to factory settings, wiping out all the old aches and shit from bruises and breaks and so on that we’ve taken before. And. Um.”

He shot a guilty sideways look at Castiel.

“Yeah,” said Sam, not looking up. “Yeah, I agreed to those ones. The rest? The... power-ups?”

“Not power-ups,” said Dean at once. “Just, like... maximising efficiency to all stats. Right?”

“So you’re stronger and quicker in body and mind than before,” said Sam quietly.

“But not _inhumanly_ so,” insisted Dean. “Just, like, a good athlete. Or the best of me on my best day all the time. You said yes to that, right?”

“Not that one,” said Sam, to the frowning little dark eyes squinting up at him. “Had enough of maximising my efficiency, thanks. I’m good with just being me now.”

“Hey,” protested Dean, “there’s nothing wrong with—”

“Not saying there is,” said Sam. “Just... I didn’t want that. Not for me. So. Are you going to call her Amara?”

“Uh.” Dean stopped still, and Castiel felt his bemusement. “I… hadn’t thought about names? Not Amara, though. She isn’t Amara, not anymore.”

“You could call her… I don’t know, Tenebra or Nocte or something. Like, Darkness or Shadow in another language. That’d sound cool,” said Sam.

“Dude. You can’t name a kid that crap. Move your arse and set the table.”

“Now who’s swearing in front of the baby?” said Sam smugly.

“Fuck off.” Dean nudged Castiel’s hip with his as he passed. “What d’you think, buddy?”

“Me?” Castiel blinked at him, a little surprised at being consulted. Then he looked at the little screwed-up face nuzzling into Sam’s shirt—the thin curls of dark hair, the little moue of a pout, the five tiny toes poking out below the cuff of the shirt she was wrapped in. And he looked at the soppy expression on Sam’s face, and the tenderness of his fingers against her little body—hands which were so much more accustomed to violence and pain than care. Hands which now, in this new world they had made, might just have a chance to learn new things.

And he found he did have an opinion, after all.

“I think,” he said, “Amanda. ‘She who is to be loved.’ A sort of a promise. To her, and to all of us.”

“Huh,” said Dean, after a moment. “I never thought about… but, yeah.”

The pancake burned.

 

***

 

Castiel reached out and touched the surface of the mirror.

Under his fingertips, his hips and belly were smooth, cold. But when he touched his own body, they seemed very different. They had meaning.

He leaned in close, fascinated, and wrinkled his nose.

He put out his tongue; tugged at the corners of his eyes; smiled five different smiles; and he watched himself, his face.

 _His_ face.

There was a freckle above one of his nipples, and his thighs were rather muscular. He’d never noticed that. He’d thought of the body as _his_ before, but it had never quite been _him_.

How strange.

 _Where are you, sister?_ Castiel thought, in Lucifer’s general direction.

He didn’t quite expect to make contact; but rather to his surprise, he felt her stir, and grumble in reply.

_Australia. Did you know that the largest living creature in the world is dying?_

Castiel considered this for a moment, as he ran his fingers over one shoulder and reflected on how it felt. _The coral reef? You consider that a single living creature_?

_Of course._

_It is made up of billions of tiny individual lives._

_So is your pet human,_ Lucifer pointed out.

 _Yes,_ said Castiel, smiling at the wiry dark hairs under his fingertips, and the way his skin pebbled at his own touch. _So are we all_. _Can you save it?_

 _I think so,_ she mused. _It would be much easier if I could smite all the humans_.

 _There would be a good deal of fallout from the gradual breakdown of all their industrial structures,_ Castiel pointed out, _and a good deal less interest in the world._

 _Don’t tell Gabriel where I am,_ Lucifer commanded him off-handedly. _He is so busy looking for me._

 _It would be a shame to ruin his fun,_ agreed Castiel gravely. _How are you?_

_I don’t know what you see in him. Besides the disgusting sublimity between his thighs._

_I have never lain between Dean’s thighs._

_I miss you_.

There was silence between them for a moment, as both (perhaps) considered the magnitude of that confession.

 _You are welcome any time,_ said Castiel, _to visit. And to talk_. _Provided you have taken no human life_.

 _I don’t_ ** _understand_** _,_ said Lucifer, fierce and quiet _. I still don’t understand. How he could do that. Make them. And then... leave_.

_He didn’t make them exactly. They grew out of the possibilities he had created. Without knowing it, because he never meant to until after they were aware. He was never him. He was always everything. And so were they._

Lucifer scowled.

_The world has changed. There is less in it that is not subject to the ordinary laws of physical creation. I met a vampire who had no more strength or speed than any human. She panicked._

_Curious. I know it feels different. I have not yet begun to investigate how things have changed, or how this will affect us._

_I killed her._

Of course she had.

 _I think,_ said Castiel carefully, _that the whole point was that humans carry both halves within themselves. Chaos and order. Life and death, light and dark._

 _Choice,_ said Lucifer, with resignation.

_Now the same burden and grace falls on us. There is no higher authority. We have only ourselves to answer to. It is within us. The greatest freedom, and the greatest responsibility._

“... uh,” said Dean from the door of the bathroom. “Shit. Sorry. I’ll... come back later?”

The atmosphere was suddenly full with Dean’s arousal, and Dean’s embarrassment. Castiel wasn’t quite sure what to make of the combination; and Lucifer flinched at the rush of it, and fled, and Castiel could not latch onto the connection in time to keep it from dissipating.

“Why?” asked Castiel, puzzled.

“Uh, well—”

Dean gestured at Castiel, up and down. “Unless you... um. Cas. I’ve... got no kind of map here, y’know? Dunno if you’re the kind of guy to... to stand here and hope I find you so that... or if this is just... hell. Tell me? I don’t know what you want, man. I never know what—”

Castiel blinked over at him. Then he looked down at his own naked body.

“Oh,” he said. “I forgot.”

“You—?”

Dean looked away. Then he looked back. Then he doubled over, laughing, supporting himself on the door frame.

“Fuck,” he said. “Hell, I—Cas. _Cas_. Did you really mean it? I mean, you really wanna... stick around?”

Castiel frowned at him. “More than stick around, Dean. I’m sure I made that clear.”

Dean rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t beat down his smile. “Yeah, well. Forgive me if I have a hard time believing the best freakin’ news I’ve ever heard.”

Castiel’s stomach did a strange, fuzzy little dance, as if it had emotions all of its own.

He rested a hand over it, curious. Dean watched him, soft and laughing, desiring, warm.

“So,” Dean said after a minute, “I. What Sam said earlier. The... complete healing thing. Reset to factory defaults.”

There were many questions Castiel wanted to ask about _that_ , and most of them were not about the healing. But Dean would talk about them, in time, as necessary.

“Yes?”

“I,” said Dean, half smiling, half diffident. “In the shower this morning. Noticed. So. Uh. Apparently my body has its own ideas about what’s... factory settings?”

He pulled down the frayed collar of his shirt, and hunched his left shoulder. There, raised and faintly red against the unmarked new skin, were the ridges of fingertips. Castiel’s fingertips; which he had healed _away_ from Dean’s body at the end of the first Apocalypse. Because he had believed that Dean did not want them.

“Oh,” said Castiel. “I... ah.”

“Yeah,” said Dean, grinning faintly. “ _Oh_. Just figured you should know. Since... y’know. You’re gonna see it all sooner or later. I freakin’ well hope.”

Castiel narrowed his eyes. “I mean to.”

Rather to his surprise, Dean went pink. He coughed, looked down, blushed, grinned sheepishly, looked back up. It was a reaction that made no sense; and Dean dispelled it before Castiel could consider it further by shrugging it off, and rubbing a hand over his mouth, and speaking more seriously.

“So. Sam called. Said he won’t be back here for a few days at least. I, uh. I don’t think he’s just skipping on diaper duty. It feels kinda like he’s... putting down roots there. With Jody.”

“Good,” said Castiel, absently, distracted by the shift of Dean’s flesh under his shirt when he crossed his arms and leaned against the door. “That will make all four of them happier.”

“Yeah. _But_.”

“But?” Castiel looked at him. Dean had his face scrunched up as if he weren’t serious; but underneath that was a vein of very real fear.

“Shit, I don’t know.” Dean exhaled, ran his fingers through his hair, looked away. “ _But_ , Cas. _You_ know.”

“I know,” said Castiel mildly, and turned away to find his clothes, and to let Dean scowl at his own reflection in the mirror. “I know Sam was your first child, and that you had no identity that was not twinned in him for many, many years. I know that you have another child now, and Sam has another life, and you will both still be each other’s first and everything, even while you find other everythings separate from each other. I know you’ll both of you hate it and love it and argue about everything. I know _you_ , Dean. And I know him. And he will never leave you.”

“... Shut up,” muttered Dean.

“As you wish.”

Dean pointed at him. “Don’t you _Princess Bride_ me.”

Castiel blinked at him innocently. “I thought you’d never seen that movie.”

“... Look, there’s some things you just pick up, okay?”

Castiel came close to him, and tucked his fingers into Dean’s belt, and looked seriously into his eyes.

“I love you,” he said.

Dean’s eyes went wide for a moment. Then they crinkled at the corners.

“I know.”


End file.
